THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FOUNDATION
11006 Veirs Mill Rd, STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
21 Shawwal 1426
(Nov 23, 2005)
Ahmed Omar Abu-Ali, Jose "Abdullah" Padilla
and the SHAME of the
SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! These words are sufficient as a description of U.S. Government actions in the case of Ahmed Omar Abu-Ali and [the newly minted criminal defendant] known as Jose Padilla. Both American-born Muslims!
The trial of Abu-Ali establishes a new precedent of sorts, as it is reportedly the first case in an American criminal courtroom, “to rely so heavily on evidence gathered by a foreign intelligence service.” Abu-Ali was imprisoned in
Abu Ali’s name had been linked by
After being held without charge - with the United States and Saudi Governments passing the buck on whose responsibility his detention was (and both governments claiming that they had nothing against him) - his family sued the United Sates in U.S. District Court (Washington, DC), contending that it had condoned their son’s torture, and demanding that he be returned post haste to his country of birth. It was under these circumstances that formal terrorism charges were leveled against him, just before his rendition from
On day three of deliberations, jurors convicted 24 year old Abu-Ali on all nine counts – which included conspiracy to assassinate President Bush, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, and [the perennial favorite] providing material support to al Qaeda. He faces 20 years to LIFE when he is sentenced February 17, 2006.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee had the power to slow down, if not abort, this miscarriage of justice. He could have thrown out the indictment, based upon all known factors surrounding this case, before it ever went to trial. However, like his fellow jurist in the same federal courthouse, Judge Leonie Brinkema, he failed miserably in the struggle between expediency and conscience!
That said, given the weight that the jury reportedly attributed to the 13 minute videotaped confession (made in Saudi Arabia), it didn’t help matters that Ahmed Abu-Ali did not testify at his trial.
The Indictment of Jose Padilla
The federal indictment against Padilla is perhaps more conspicuous for what he wasn’t charged with. He was arrested at
The 31 page indictment includes NEITHER of these charges! Instead, the heart of the indictment alleges that Jose Padilla is part of a violent terrorism conspiracy rooted in
According to the government Jose Padilla attended the al Qaeda-affliated al-Farouq training camp in Afghanistan in 2000, under the name Abdullah al-Espani; and in 2002 approached al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan with an offer to commit terrorist acts in the United States. On May 8th he reportedly arrived in
On December 4, 2002, U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey ruled that a federal court has authority to decide whether Padilla was properly detained as an enemy combatant. On December 18, 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) ordered Padilla’s release from military custody within 30 days; and further stated that he could be tried, if the government chose to do so, in a civilian court. On January 27, 2004, the appeals court agreed to suspend its ruling after the Bush administration appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On September 9, 2005, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Padilla could be held indefinitely; and on October 25th of this year, attorneys for Padilla asked the Supreme Court to limit the government’s power to hold him (and other terrorism suspects) indefinitely and without charges. (The Bush Administration’s deadline for filing arguments was less than a week from now – Nov 28th.)
Yesterday an indictment by a federal grand jury in
As a consequence of being held for three years without formal charge as an “enemy combatant,” American-born Padilla has been at the center of a fierce legal and political battle for much of this time. His lawyers – who he met for the first time on March 3, 2004 - have argued his military confinement was unconstitutional under a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in which the court found that another U.S born citizen held as an enemy combatant, Yaser Hamdi, had a right to contest his incarceration.
The government was under pressure to either “charge him, or release him” – and thus, yesterday’s indictment appears to some as nothing more than a thinly veiled strategy of the Bush administration to avoid another adverse Supreme Court ruling. Indeed, Attorney General Gonzales is reported as saying, “Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in
Again, it is significant to note that Ahmed Abu-Ali wasn’t charged with a crime until pressure was successfully brought to bear to return him to the
We should also state for the record that the mere fact that the first Hispanic Attorney General of the United States, Alberto R. Gonzales, was the one to formally announce this politically driven indictment (against a fellow Latino), in no way legitimizes these charges, in our humble view. It merely affirms how Gonzales (like other minority “firsts”) accords high value to the corrupting requisites of political expediency.
On a concluding note, a representative of one of the
Well, Jose “Abdullah” Padilla has now been charged ... some kind of “welcome development” it is.