Dirty bomb suspect a product of a Pakistani Taco Bell manager?
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Bomb suspect changed his life in South Florida
Al Qaeda called Jose Padilla `the immigrant'
miami.com
Al Qaeda documents called him ''the immigrant'' -- a man weaned on Puerto Rican Catholicism, raised in Chicago, transplanted to Florida, converted to Islam and finally adopted by the masters of al Qaeda.
Jose Padilla's mutation into Abdullah al Muhajir, Islamic fundamentalist and alleged al Qaeda operative, was complete by the time he left South Florida in the late 1990s. When he and wife Cherie Maria Stultz divorced in 2001, she no longer knew where her husband was. His last known address on their divorce papers: Mustafa Basha Street in Cairo.
Padilla is accused of plotting to detonate a ''dirty bomb'' capable of spewing radiation across an American city.
Federal agents insist the plot was for real. A senior administration official said documents found by the U.S. military in Afghanistan or Pakistan had referred to Padilla as ''the immigrant.'' The official also said Padilla was perceived by al Qaeda as ''a throw away'' worth sacrificing to gain an important objective.
From 1995 to 1996, Padilla occasionally attended Saturday morning Koran studies run by the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines. Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, head of the Institute, said he always wore a kaffiyeh scarf over his head -- the multicolored headscarf typically worn by devout Muslim men in the Middle East.
''Nobody wears that [in the United States]. He even wore that with his regular clothes,'' Mohamed said.
MARITAL COUNSELING
His wife, who identified herself as Marwah, sought marital counseling after her divorce last year, Mohamed said.
''I don't know why she called me. Maybe because I'm a religious leader. She told me Ibrahim had divorced her and had moved to Egypt,'' he said.
Two other Broward County men, Imran Mandhai, 19, and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, 24, accused of plotting a ''holy war'' bombing campaign in South Florida, attended prayer services at Darul Uloom. Mandhai was arrested in February; Jokhan was arrested last month.
Mohamed said the center is open to everyone -- which has advantages and disadvantages.
''All kind of people will pass through here,'' he said.
Whatever Padilla may have plotted, his trespasses before his May 8 detention at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago hardly rose to the level of international news: A road-rage incident in Sunrise, a probation sentence in Chicago over the theft of a doughnut, patches of jail time and alleged membership in the Latin Disciples street gang.
Those who were once closest to him were reticent to discuss Padilla's past. With dozens of reporters camped outside the home she shares with her mother, his ex-wife taped a handwritten note to her door Tuesday afternoon.
''All I can say at this point is, all my desires, all my strength, are in God's hand,'' she wrote. ``Thank you, have a blessed day, may God be with you all.''
Outside, the windshield of Stultz's Geo Prizm was decorated with an enigmatic symbol: A sticker of an American flag, turned upside-down.
Padilla's overwhelmed mother, Estela Ortega, left a note of her own on the door of her Plantation condominium: ``Please: LEAVE this family IN PEACE. ... As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.''
If Padilla did indeed fall in with a network of al Qaeda terrorists planning another attack on the United States, he never told his mother, according to her attorney.
''What his mother told me was, she had no basis for believing that her son was involved in any activities involving terrorists or anyone who would want to bring harm to the United States,'' said Victor Olds, a New York attorney representing Ortega.
Olds said Ortega testified before a grand jury in New York two weeks ago but only Monday realized why.
''Since he's been in custody ... she has made several attempts to see him, and she has not been successful in those attempts,'' Olds said.
Padilla's life story, as portrayed in official records and government statements, takes him from a Hispanic Catholic upbringing in a Chicago graystone amid Hispanic street gangs to an Islamic epiphany in South Florida and a shaky contract with al Qaeda.
A federal official told The Herald that Padilla converted to Islam shortly after his release from the Broward County Jail on Aug. 5, 1992. He had served a 10-month sentence following a road rage incident in Sunrise.
On Tuesday, Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said there were no signs of an imminent conversion to Islam during the time Padilla spent behind bars in Broward. The jail has no record of him requesting a name change or a copy of the Koran, Jenne said.
The manager of a Davie fast food restaurant where Padilla and his future wife worked said Tuesday that the pair were ''interested in Islam'' when he hired them in 1992 after Padilla's release from jail.
'As employer, I couldn't go into religion. I told him: `Check the Yellow Pages, and you'll find where to go. Any mosque, any imam will help you,' '' recalled Mohammed Javed, 49, a Pakistani immigrant who managed a Taco Bell where the pair worked for two years.
Javed recalled a hard-working young man, but one he said might have been particularly vulnerable to manipulation. ''He was very poor,'' Javed said. ``The way to get recruits is to lure them with money.''
Javed, co-founder of the Broward School of Islamic Studies, a school and mosque, said the pair could have undergone conversion anywhere.
'They could have gone to any mosque. All it takes (to convert) is to say: `I believe in one God, and Muhammad is the last prophet, and I bear witness to that.' ''
In 1993, Padilla moved in with then-girlfriend Stultz. The couple lived at the Inverrary Club Apartments, a gated, peach-colored compound of low-rise buildings in Lauderhill, until 1998, said Lynn Zovluck, a manager. Padilla married the Jamaican-born Stultz at the Fort Lauderdale Courthouse on Jan. 2, 1996. On their marriage license, he signed his name simply as ``Ibrahim.''
SEPARATION
The two separated around February 1999 and divorced on March 15, 2001. By that time, Stultz had not seen or heard from her husband in more than two years, and her attorney was unable to serve him divorce papers.
Maria Rossello, Padilla's maternal grandmother, said her grandson had been in ''Arabia'' for the past five years but the family did not know what he was doing there.
She said Padilla was a member of the church choir as a youngster in Chicago but ``was a very sad kid.''
Padilla, born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican ancestry, moved to Chicago with his family at age four.
He attended Charles R. Darwin Grammar School. By the time he was in high school, he was locked up in a juvenile facility for his role in a fatal stabbing, friends said.
''Most of the guys he hung out with back then are dead or in jail,'' said Joan Leon, 51, who lives in the same Chicago three-flat where Padilla resided as a teen.
``He hung out on the streets; he was a gang member.''
But federal investigators say they put little stock in the stories of Padilla's gang membership.
Padilla entered school in bilingual classes for Spanish-speakers and picked up the nickname Pucho -- ''chubby'' -- for his round cheeks.
''He was an ordinary boy, an average boy who blended in,'' said Craig Tatar, who taught Padilla at the Chicago school.
``He was smart, but he didn't realize his full potential.''
Herald staff writers Jerry Berrios, Hannah Sampson, Michael A.W. Ottey, Caroline Keough, Natalie McNeal, Ian Demsky, Phil Long and Knight Ridder correspondent Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this report, which was supplemented with material from Herald wire services. |
