Convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla sentenced to 17 years

MIAMI – Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al-Qaida to blow up a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that don’t mention those initial allegations.\nThe sentence, imposed by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, marks another step in the extraordinary personal and legal odyssey for the 37-year-old Muslim convert, a U.S. citizen who was held for three-and-a-half years as an enemy combatant after his 2002 arrest amid the “dirty bomb” allegations.\nProsecutors had sought a life sentence, but Cooke said she arrived at the 17-year sentence after considering the “harsh conditions” during Padilla’s lengthy military detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.\n“I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla ... they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case,” the judge said.\nCooke also imposed prison terms on two other men of Middle Eastern origin who were convicted of conspiracy and material support charges along with Padilla in August. The three were part of a North American support cell for al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists around the world, prosecutors said.\nThe jury was told that Padilla was recruited by Islamic extremists in the U.S. and filled out an application to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.\nCooke said that as serious as the conspiracy was, there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere.\n“There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere,” she said.\nPadilla was added in 2005 to an existing Miami terrorism support case just as the U.S. Supreme Court was considering his challenge to President Bush’s decision to hold him in custody indefinitely without charge. The “dirty bomb” charges were quietly discarded and were never part of the criminal case.\nCooke sentenced Padilla’s recruiter, 45-year-old Adham Amin Hassoun, to 15 years and eight months in prison and the third defendant, 46-year-old Kifah Wael Jayyousi, to 12 years and eight months. Jayyousi was a financier and propagandist for the cell that assisted Islamic extremists in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere, according to trial testimony. Both also faced life in prison.\nPadilla’s mother, Estela Lebron, smiled at reporters in the courtroom when the sentence was announced and questioned outside the courthouse whether the Bush administration had misplaced its priorities in prosecuting her son.\n“This is the way they are spending our money? Hello?” she said.\nBut she was also pleased he didn’t get the maximum sentence. “I feel good about everything. This is amazing.”\nThe men were convicted after a three-month trial based on tens of thousands of FBI telephone intercepts collected over an eight-year investigation and a form Padilla filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, converted to Islam in prison and was recruited by Hassoun while attending a mosque in Sunrise, a suburb of Chicago. \nPadilla’s arrest was initially portrayed by the Bush administration as an important victory in the months immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and later was seen as a symbol of the administration’s zeal to prevent homegrown terrorism.\nCivil liberties groups and Padilla’s lawyers called his detention unconstitutional for someone born in this country.\nJurors in the criminal case never heard Padilla’s full history, which according to U.S. officials included a graduation from the al-Qaida terror camp, a plot to detonate the “dirty bomb” and a plot to fill apartments with natural gas and blow them up. Much of what Padilla supposedly told interrogators during his long detention as an enemy combatant could not be used in court because he had no access to a lawyer and was not read his constitutional rights.\nAttorneys for Hassoun and Jayyousi argued that any assistance they provided overseas was for peaceful purposes and to help persecuted Muslims in violent countries. But FBI agents testified that their charitable work was a cover for violent jihad, which they frequently discussed in code using words such as “tourism” and “football.”