Padilla verdict mixed victory for Bush
WASHINGTON – The guilty verdict against Jose Padilla and his co-defendants in Miami on Thursday handed at least a partial victory to the Bush administration’s legal strategy in the war on terrorism on the domestic front. The outcome also indicated, however, that the practice of imprisoning “enemy combatants” without charges for as long as three and a half years may be unnecessary.
Padilla was suspected of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb,” but never charged. He was declared an enemy combatant and held in a military brig for three and a half years.
Instead, the government accused him of supporting violent extremist groups overseas. Some court observers thought the government evidence was thin, but the jury verdict came after only a day and a half of deliberations.
“The implications are clear that if you deal with the enemy, the government will have a good shot at you,” said Robert Heibel, former deputy director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division and now director of the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies in Erie, Pa.
“If the government makes a decent case of culpability, it can get a conviction.”
Some critics of Bush’s strategy say the nation should rely less on military might to fight terrorism and focus more on tracking down al-Qaida and other groups through criminal investigations. The Padilla case indicated that charges against American citizens, at least, can be successfully prosecuted in civilian courts without resorting to secret military tribunals.
But some legal experts say both methods may prove necessary.
“More and more people around the world are a threat but have no interaction with our judicial system,” said Martin J. Sweet, assistant professor of political science in Florida Atlantic University’s Honors College.
“Those people aren’t worried about a trial court in Miami, Florida.”
“Our judicial system is a backstop to clean up the mess after it happens,” Sweet said. “It’s not the front line of any war on terrorism.”