Word: terrorists
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...accounts, what happened next was a model of surgical counterterrorism. When it was over, the Americans delivered Dadullah's corpse to Afghan authorities, who draped it in hot-pink sheets and displayed it for photographers in Kandahar, a ghoulish ritual that now attends the killing of any high-value terrorist target...
...today, as opening statements commence at Padilla's federal criminal trial in Miami, he seems little more than some poor schmo who the government says got mixed up in a vague plan to support terrorist mischief abroad...
...Padilla was in Afghanistan when the U.S. invaded in October 2001, moving "from safe house to safe house," the court records say, until he made it to Pakistan. There he allegedly met suspected terrorist honchos like Abu Zubaydah (to whom he allegedly suggested making a dirty bomb) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (who allegedly told him to go to the U.S. and blow up apartment buildings...
...Cooke has also given the government headaches. The case, which consists of three counts against Padilla and his co-defendants for "conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim" and give "material support" to terrorist activity, "is very light on the facts," she told prosecutors during a pre-trial hearing last summer. Just as significant, Cooke threw out the "conspiracy to murder" count because, she ruled, it duplicated the conspiracy mentioned in the two other counts. Her decision would have eliminated the possibility of a life sentence, leaving a maximum of 15 years in prison for each defendant, had it not been...
...What prosecutors are left with, then, is an underwhelming case involving cryptic evidence of a murder and terrorist conspiracy that lacks names, places or pretty much any other specifics. Even if they manage to pull off a conviction, we still won't know whether Padilla really was the Dirty Bomber. And if they don't? The government has the option of reclassifying him as an enemy combatant, which, believe it or not, could start the process all over again...