ABSTRACT
January 2008: After a three-month trial and a seven-day sentencing hearing, José Padilla, the Brooklyn-born convert to Islam whom the government once accused of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States, is sentenced to 17 years and 4 months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to help Islamic jihadist fighters abroad. The case began with his arrest in May 2002 at O’Hare airport in Chicago, after which Attorney General John Ashcroft announces that Mr. Padilla was part of an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States” by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb intended to cause “mass death and injury.” He is identified as an “enemy combatant” and held without charge.
