Jose Padilla

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the US Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed — that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in a US city. For over three years, Binyam’s lawyers at Reprieve, the London-based [...]

Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli (PDF) that the President can arrest US citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion [...]

The news that US citizen Jose Padilla has received a prison sentence of 17 years and four months should provoke outrage in the United States, although it is unlikely that there will be much more than a whimper of dissent. The former gang member and convert to Islam –- whose arrest in May 2002 was [...]

As the Fourth Circuit appeals court considers the case of Ali al-Marri, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, investigates the story of the last “enemy combatant” held without trial in Guantánamo’s shadowy American counterpart, the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Torture is defined in many ways. To the US administration, nothing that it [...]

Andy Worthington is a London-based historian, who has written three books on civil rights issues, including, most recently, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, scheduled for release in October, which is the most detailed and specific account to date of the capture and provenance of the over 700 [...]

On Tuesday, Scott Horton invited me back on his radio show to discuss Jose Padilla, Guantánamo, torture, secret prisons and the fact that something rotten lurks at the heart of the current US administration. The interview followed the publication of my article Jose Padilla: More Sinned Against Than Sinning, published on Anti-war.com (and also here), [...]

News that Jose Padilla’s lawyers are seeking to hold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 59 other US officials responsible for “abusive and unconstitutional tactics used against Mr. Padilla while he was held in military custody as an enemy combatant from 2002 to 2006” has temporarily revived the story of the Chicago-born former gang member [...]