The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive ”dirty bomb” in a United States city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaeda, it was claimed on Thursday.
Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an ”enemy combatant” in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad. After his arrest in 2002 the Brooklyn-born Muslim convert was also accused by the administration of planning to blow up apartment blocks in New York using natural gas.
The administration had used his case as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaeda inside the United States.
Thursday’s New York Times, quoting unnamed current and former government officials, said the main evidence of Padilla’s involvement in the plots against US cities had come from two captured al-Qaeda leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a leading al-Qaeda recruiter. But the officials told the newspaper Padilla could not be charged with the bomb plots because neither of the al-Qaeda leaders could be used as witnesses as they had been subjected to harsh questioning and could open up charges from defence lawyers that their earlier statements resulted from torture.
Officials also feared that their testimony could expose classified information about the CIA prison system in which the men were thought to be held.
The CIA has never publicly acknowledged it is detaining Mohammed and Zubaydah. It is not known where they are being held. But it was reported last month the CIA was using secret detention centres in eastern Europe, possibly in Poland and Romania, for interrogations, thus beyond the reach of US law.
Internal reviews by the CIA have raised questions about the treatment and credibility of the two men. The New York Times said one review, completed in spring last year by the CIA inspector general, found that in the first months after his capture Mohammed had suffered excessive use of ”waterboarding”, a technique involving near drowning which entails the detainee being strapped to a board and then submerged.
Announcing the charges against Padilla on Tuesday, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, repeatedly refused to answer questions on why none of the allegations involving attacks on the US had been included. ”I am not going to talk about previous accusations and allegations that are outside the indictment,” he said. However, the New York Times said the officials had emphasised that the government was not backing off its initial assertions about the seriousness of Padilla’s actions.
Padilla was arrested at O’Hare airport in Chicago in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. President George Bush declared him an enemy combatant, and the administration resisted calls to charge and try him in civilian courts. His case became a cause célèbre, with human rights groups claiming it was an extreme example of how civil liberties had been brushed aside in pursuit of the war on terror.
Padilla was handed over last week to the justice department for civilian proceedings, avoiding a potentially embarrassing supreme court showdown over how long the US government could hold one of its citizens in military custody without charges.
Torture has become an emotive issue around the world since prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was uncovered. A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam, would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Dick Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted – causing the Washington Post to label him ”Vice President for Torture” in an editorial. – Guardian Unlimited Â