| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| The Saga of Jose Padilla -- Once a Criminal, Always a Criminal |
| 2004-04-25 |
| .... Now Mr. [Jose] Padilla’s mother, his ex-wife in Florida, his second wife in Egypt and friends have broken their anxious silence. Together with accounts from former and current government officials and court papers, they trace Mr. Padilla’s journey from Pentecostal child preacher to Muslim convert to suspected terrorist, from a Taco Bell in Davie, Fla., to a pilgrimage site in Mecca to the Charleston, S.C., brig. .... At 14, he got involved disastrously with an older friend in a murder that began as a petty robbery. Mr. Padilla and his friend were drinking on a street corner in Chicago when they decided to rob a couple of Mexican immigrants. The immigrants put up a fight and chased them until Mr. Padilla’s friend tired of running and, for the net gain of a watch and about $9 in pesos, stabbed one of the immigrants, Elio Evangelista, to death. Mr. Padilla then kicked the victim in the head "because he felt like it," according to his juvenile records. Mr. Padilla was placed in juvenile detention until he was 19. When Mr. Padilla was 19, his first son, Joshua, was born. .... Several months [later], Mr. Padilla, who was 20, got into a traffic dispute on a thoroughfare in Broward County, according to law enforcement records. He cut off another driver and, for punctuation, flashed a revolver at him. The other driver, trying to read Mr. Padilla’s license plate, then followed him to a gas station. Mr. Padilla responded by firing off a single shot — into the air, he later told the police. He was charged with three felony counts and sent to the Broward County jail. A few months into his detention, Mr. Padilla got aggressive with a guard and was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer. .... Pleading guilty to both sets of charges, Mr. Padilla got out of jail after 10 months. It was the summer of 1992, he was 21 .... He spent the six years after his release — from jail, not from prison — living in Florida. On his release, Mr. Padilla applied for a job at the Taco Bell in Davie .... Muhammed Javed, a Pakistani-American and co-founder of the Broward School of Islamic Studies, was the manager. .... With the exception of traffic infractions, Mr. Padilla kept out of trouble with the law. He became a quiet, studious regular at Arabic and scripture classes at the Darul Uloom mosque in Pembroke Pines and then at Masjid Al-Iman in downtown Fort Lauderdale. ... In 1998, Mr. Padilla decided that he wanted to immerse himself more fully in the Arabic language and in Islam. Mr. Awad said it was common for mosques in America to encourage converts by offering them scholarships to study abroad. At Masjid Al-Iman, he said, a collection was taken to pay for Mr. Padilla’s ticket and travel expenses. .... In Egypt, Mr. Padilla called his wife once a month for the first six months. He offered little information. .... After a year or so in Egypt, the man said, Mr. Padilla expressed an interest in marrying. .... [An acquaintance] presented Mr. Padilla to a villager, Abu Shamia’a, as a suitor for his daughter, Shamia’a, who was then 19. .... Mr. Padilla had only $480 in savings, Abu Shamia’a said, so he married his daughter off not for financial reasons but for religious ones. .... In Florida, [his wife] learned of her husband’s betrothal from an Egyptian-American friend. Horrified, she called and pleaded with Mr. Padilla not to proceed with another marriage. ... The marriage was dissolved. After his second wedding, in July 1999, Mr. Padilla moved his new wife to Cairo, where he worked days teaching English at a private school and nights as a gym trainer and martial arts instructor. In early 2000, he traveled to Saudi Arabia for the hajj, the annual religious pilgrimage to the birthplace of Islam. Some time after returning from the hajj, Mr. Padilla told his wife that he had an offer to teach English in Yemen. .... In the spring of 2002, Abu Zubaydah, a senior official of Al Qaeda who was in American custody at an undisclosed location overseas, told his interrogators about Mr. Padilla and the alleged dirty bomb plot, government officials say. He did not name Mr. Padilla but described him physically and referred to him as a Latin American man who went by a Muslim name .... At about the same time, Mr. Padilla was briefly detained in Pakistan on a passport violation. This helped a customs intelligence agent link the name given by Abu Zubaydah to "an Arab alias not mentioned by the detainee" .... That "alias" led the agent to Mr. Padilla’s Florida driver’s license ... the photo was shown to "a detainee," presumably Abu Zubaydah, who confirmed that Mr. Padilla was the "Latin American" he had been describing. The Pakistanis also viewed the photo and made a confirmation. In the weeks leading to his arrest, Mr. Padilla made two trips to Zurich, possibly just in transit between countries in the Middle East. ... On April 4, Mr. Padilla arrived in Zurich on a flight from Karachi and checked into a downtown hotel, his movements and phone calls closely monitored by Swiss officials working with the C.I.A. He made several calls to Pakistan, the European official said. After four days in Zurich, Mr. Padilla returned to Egypt to see his family. .... Mr. Padilla spent a month in the village, renting his wife her own house there and leaving her with her yearly allowance plus rent, she said. In early May, Mr. Padilla’s Egyptian family drove him to the airport for what they thought was a long-overdue trip to the United States to see his American family. "This was the last time we saw him," Shamia’a said, tears dripping onto her veil. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #3 i wish his smegma was dripping from her vale |
| Posted by: SON OF TOLUI 2004-04-26 2:21:43 AM |
| #2 Davie's gone downhill since they outlawed horeses in the street. Trivium: BushWood Country Club is actually which golf course in Davie? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-04-25 3:56:08 PM |
| #1 "pure as the driven snow"; "wouldn't hurt a fly"; ...yadda yadda ....STFU - throw away the key on this cretin |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-25 10:08:36 AM |