You Decide

I can't decide whether this report  about a recent hearing for Jose Padilla is news or commentary.  The Contra Cost Times places it under "news,"  but for the life of me, all I read appears to be commentary:

If one-time accused "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla thought he had no legal rights in military detention for nearly four years, he's quickly found that federal court is a far different place.

He learned as much on Friday when he appeared for the first time before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. Consider:

• She ordered the government not to shackle Padilla or the other defendants during their court appearances on terrorism conspiracy charges. "No one is to be handcuffed in court," she declared.

• She ordered federal prosecutors to turn over final -- not rough -- translations of surveillance transcripts and other critical evidence to lawyers for Padilla and two co-defendants by next month.

• She ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to provide a bigger conference room for those attorneys to meet with their clients, now in solitary confinement at the Miami Federal Detention Center, to prepare for a September trial.

"I don't want to run a prison," Cooke said. "What I want to do is make sure that prisoners in administrative detention have access to their lawyers."

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested by the FBI in Chicago in May 2002 upon his return from Pakistan.

He was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on U.S. soil. But formal charges were never filed by the Bush administration.

For nearly four years, he was held by the military in virtual isolation, even from his lawyers.

Then last month, he was transferred from a South Carolina naval brig to the Miami Federal Detention Center after the Bush administration decided to withdraw his designation as an "enemy combatant."

Padilla, 35, who once lived in South Florida, is charged with being part of a five-member North American Islamic cell that aided a holy war overseas with money, recruits and intelligence.

The indictment says he traveled to the Middle East, applied to an al-Qaida training camp and participated in Islamic jihad -- though it does not provide any details of his or the other defendants' involvement in a terrorist act.

Prosecutors say the North American cell was headed by a Palestinian computer programmer from Sunrise, Fla., Adham Amin Hassoun, who allegedly recruited Padilla and sent him to the Middle East for training with al-Qaida.

At Friday's hearing, both Hassoun and Padilla were separately shackled by their arms, waists and legs.

The third defendant, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a former school administrator who is being detained in solitary confinement at the Miami Federal Detention Center, did not attend the hearing.

Two other defendants alleged to be part of the North American cell are in custody in the Middle East.