US citizen, arrested in US and held for three years w/o charges, finally indicted today (coincidentally, right before the SC considers his challenge to his being held seemingly indefinitely, contra to the US constitution). Charges -- engaged in "a plot to 'murder, kidnap and maim' people . . . " where? where are the people he was plotting to do bad things to? ". . . overseas."
- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who announced the indictment here, said that Mr. Padilla had conspired as part of a "North American support cell" to send "money, physical assets and new recruits" overseas to engage in acts of terrorism and that he had traveled abroad himself to become "a violent jihadist."
. . .
The indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami, said that Mr. Padilla had plotted with four co-defendants in South Florida and elsewhere from October 1993 to the fall of 2001 to promote terrorist activities overseas.
Often speaking over the telephone in code, the indictment said, the defendants talked of getting money "to the soccer team in Chechnya or Bosnia," of "trade in Somalia," of going on a picnic in Egypt "God willing" and getting "green goods" to Lebanon, where they were "needed urgently," and of assisting "tourism" in Kosovo. The indictment says they traveled overseas to foster terrorism and sometimes funneled money to terrorists under the guise of charitable donations.
. . .
Although today Mr. Gonzales described Mr. Padilla as a violent jihadist, there was no mention of the earlier "dirty bomb" accusation, which was never the subject of formal charges. Nor was there a mention in the indictment of any violence that Mr. Padilla had hoped to wreak in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/po...rtner=homepage
I really hope that additional charges having to do with stuff directed at the US (even US citizens overseas, or whatever) are added.
