Seventeen years for Hispanic Muslim convert
Jose Padilla, the Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and became part of what the government claimed was an al Qaeda “dirty bomb” plot was sentenced to seventeen years in federal prison, ending a case that brought to light allegations of torture and concerns about the slow but significant conversion of many http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1529 the Constitutional rights of US citizens.
The sentencing of Padilla on terrorism conspiracy and material support charges was something of a letdown for the government, which had demanded life in prison for Padilla and two other defendants. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was somewhat scathing in her remarks at sentencing: “There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere. There was never a plot to overthrow the United States government.”
As with some http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2643 a shaky case, advance a legal agenda to whittle down Constitutional guarantees, and to make government efforts in the “war on terror” seem effective.
Photo: Padilla was kept blindfolded with heavy goggles, his ears muffled and in total isolation.Judge Cooke also based her comparatively lenient sentence on US governmet maltreatment of Padilla, which amounted to torture and denied him his right to a speedy trial.
Federal agents arrested Padilla in Chicago on May 8, 2002, holding him as a material witness until President Bush designated him an “illegal enemy combatant” on June 9, 2002. The government said that this designation legally deprived Padilla of a trial in civilian court. Padilla was shipped to a military prison, where he was held in extreme sensory and sleep deprivation conditions that by any standard amount to torture. Padilla was kept blindfolded with heavy goggles, his ears muffled and in total isolation, where he was forced to maintain stress positions. Claims have been made that mind altering drugs were also used on him. The experience has shattered Padilla’s psyche, rendering him unfit to stand trial in the opinion of at least two psychiatrists.
Because of the Constitutional and civil rights issues raised by Padilla’s imprisonment, among them the concern that any US citizen might be held indefinately and with no legal recourse on the word of the government, he was eventually charged with three counts of conspiracy, a charge known as “the prosecutor’s friend.” According to the government, Padilla “conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas.” The “dirty bomb” plot, Padilla’s supposed plan to detonate radioactive material in a US metropolis, was conveniently forgotten, as was the link with al Qaeda that had initially gotten so much attention. Many saw the charges as a cynical attempt by the government to avoid having their post 9/11 legal actions shot down by the Supreme Court, with his lawyer saying that “the administration is seeking to avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the issue.”
In the end, one count was thrown out and another heavily amended, but despite these blows to the government, Padilla had clearly “been up to something” and was convicted after a three month trial. http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2527, the esteemed former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, blasted the conviction as an assault on America that no terrorist could ever carry out with success. “Anglo-American law is a human achievement 800 years in the making. Over centuries law was transformed from a weapon in the hands of government into a shield of the people from unaccountable power. The Padilla Jury’s verdict turned law back into a weapon … The incompetent “Padilla Jury” has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system who now wield the powers that Bentham wanted to give them,” Roberts said.
While the government’s treatment of Jose Padilla was dangerous to the Constitution and the rights of all Americans, there is no denying that Padilla is a nasty piece of work. There’s also the obvious fact that a terrorist may also suffer torture. The child of migrants from Puerto Rico, Padilla was an active member of the brutal http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2028 gang. Ironically, given Padilla’s later exploits, El Rukn “emir” Jeff Fort made a pact with Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to carry out acts of domestic terrorism against Gaddafi’s chosen US targets back in the 1980s, crimes for which Fort is presently serving an 80-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
As a Latin King, Jose Padilla kicked a rival gang member to death and converted to Islam while in prison serving a sentence for that crime. Upon his release, Padilla, now Abdullah al-Muhajir, entered a life of militant Islamist activism. When Padilla/al-Muhajir was eventually arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport he had already journeyed to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq where, the government alleged, he made contact with Islamist groups like al Qaeda.
The Padilla case drew some attention to the phenomenon of Islamic missionary success among Hispanics, which takes some interesting twists. Spain was occupied from the 700s AD to 1492 by a series of Islamic occupation states originating in North Africa collectively known as al-Andalus, today’s Andalusia. Jihadis still see this westernmost outpost of Islam as lost territory which Allah has commanded them to regain.
Muslim missionaries in America have appealed to this aspect of Spanish history, arguing that the modern-day Hispanic population should return to its “original” Islamic faith, wrested from them by the evil Christian conquistadors who soon went on to oppress the Indians of the New World. (Interestingly, Padilla’s Muslim name “al-Muhajir” may reflect the teaching that Hispanic converts are “returning” to their ancestral faith; Muhajir means “refugee” or “emigrant.”) Thus in the Muslim analysis, “Mestizo” Hispanics — half-“Arab”/half-Indian — are doubly oppressed and must find a home in Islam. These arguments are based on the Black Legend, a set of historical hypotheses advanced by early Protestant and Jewish propagandists, as well as mavericks in the Spanish ruling class, aiming to paint Spain as http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2635.
Hispanic cultural practices also have an interesting interface with Islam, especially the practice of machismo, which finds an echo in the second-class status afforded women in Islam.
While these fanciful Islamic revisions of history have had some impact on Catholic Hispanics, who are already holders of various http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1305 operations to facilitate terrorist infiltration of the US.