Dirty Bomb' Suspect's Case Goes Nowhere, Time Says
By Reuters | New York Times
Sunday, 11 August, 2002
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The case against Jose Padilla, whose detention for allegedly plotting to build a
``dirty bomb'' was dramatically announced in June by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, is going
nowhere and appears to have been ``blown out of all proportion,'' Newsweek reported on Sunday.
Padilla, 31, an American citizen accused of being an al Qaeda operative who was planning to set off a
radiological bomb in the United States, was arrested in Chicago four months ago. He is being detained as
an ``enemy combatant'' in a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
Last week Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, told Newsweek his client had told family members he was
coming to Chicago from Zurich, Switzerland, to visit his 12-year-old son.
The Justice Department has brought no charges against Padilla, a New York native who goes by the
name of Abdullah al Muhajir, and many U.S. officials now acknowledge that his alleged plot ``had never
moved beyond talk,'' Newsweek reported.
``If Padilla had any accomplices in the U.S. they have never been found -- or even identified,'' said the
magazine, which quoted one intelligence official as saying the idea of a plot was ``blown out of all
proportion.''
Ashcroft, who announced Padilla's arrest at a June 10 news conference in Moscow that was broadcast
around the world, publicly accused him of planning to use a ``dirty bomb.''
Such a device would combine conventional explosive -- even dynamite -- with radioactive material. It is
designed to spew radiation over a huge area, spreading terror and illness rather than inflicting mass
casualties.
Ashcroft said the government had ``multiple, independent and corroborating sources'' that Padilla was
closely associated with al Qaeda and was ``involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent
American civilians in the United States.''
``Inside the U.S. intelligence community, sources tell Newsweek, there were high-level doubts about
Ashcroft's dramatic announcement from the start,'' the magazine said.
Padilla has been held incommunicado ever since ``with no charges pending against him and no
prospect of a trial or court hearing where the government's evidence can be tested.''
Newsweek said U.S. authorities were not even interested in making a case against Padilla, but intend
to force him to tell what he knows about al Qaeda -- which the United States blames for carrying out the
Sept. 11 attacks on America.
``If this guy thinks he might be there for 20 years with no recourse, he might just say, 'OK, let's talk,'''
the magazine quoted an administration official as saying.
So just another failure by Ashcroft.....remember the timing of his great announcement from RussiA!....just when Bush was taking a beating that day.
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