An al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the United States was disrupted when a U.S. citizen was arrested in Chicago last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today.
Ashcroft said Al Mujahir, also known as Jose Padilla, was arrested May 8 as he flew from Pakistan into Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb,” Ashcroft said. Such a weapon is a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material that could, if detonated in a city center, kill thousands of people initially and contaminate many thousands of others.
The probable target of Mujahir’s plans to detonate the bomb was Washington, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity. The plot was not believed to have passed the early planning stages.
Ashcroft said the government’s suspicions about Mujahir’s plans came from “multiple, independent, corroborating sources.”
Mujahir is a former Chicago street gang member who served time in prison in the 1990s, converted to Islam and met with al-Qaeda officials in 2001 in Pakistan before returning to the United States. Ashcroft said Mujahir “trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices.”
Ashcroft said al Qaida apparently believed that Mujahir would be permitted to travel freely within the United States because of his U.S. citizenship and because he carried a U.S. passport.
Mujahir will be detained by the U.S. military as an “enemy combatant,”
| Government officials referred to the 1942 case Ex Parte Quirin, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found “The ... enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed ... to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.” |
the attorney general said, setting up the first military tribunal since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We have acted with legal authority both under the laws of war and clear Supreme Court precedent, which establishes that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts,” Ashcroft said.
Source: Attorney General John Ashcroft (Associated Press & ABC News contributed to this report)