Padilla fingerprint match questioned

[TexasLawyer]

Source: AP

Fri, May. 18, 2007
Padilla fingerprint match questioned
By Curt Anderson
Associated Press

MIAMI - Seven fingerprints on a purported al-Qaeda training-camp application came back as matches to alleged terrorist operative Jose Padilla, a government expert testified yesterday.

But Secret Service fingerprint specialist John Morgan also acknowledged under defense questioning that there was no way to be certain when the fingerprints were placed on the "mujahedeen data form" recovered by the CIA in Afghanistan.

Defense lawyers theorize that Padilla, 36, a U.S. citizen and former Chicago gang member, may have touched the form during his confinement at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. He was held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant before his indictment in late 2005 in the Miami terrorism-support case.

Although the form was one of dozens found in a binder in late 2001, it was not analyzed for Padilla's fingerprints until August 2006, Morgan said. The fingerprints appear only on the front of the first page and back of the last page, possibly indicating that the form had been simply handed to Padilla at some point, defense lawyers say.

<snip>


Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/7569192.html

[wakeme2008]

1. Bingo somebody handed him a stack of papers

Front and back only :rofl:

[Roland99]

6. "We've got him now, sir!"

[Pawel K]

2. An application form to enter a terrorist training camp. Are you fucking serious?

Please tell me this is some kind of joke. What kind of idiot would fall for this bullshit, I don't think they are even trying to hide the fact that its all bullshit. I think instead they are testing us on how far we will allow them to go before americans stand up and raise hell about all of this.

[Pawel K]

3. LOL, just to follow up, I found the application

http://abcnews.go.com/images/TheLaw/padilladoc.pdf

Seriously, this is a joke, right?

[tonkatoy57]

5. It is to Laugh

That's the first thing I thought of as well. Terrorist camp application forms?
Do you need your doctor to complete your health history and sign? Are there scholarships availble for destitute would be terrorists? Do you get placed in higher level classes if you have previous terrorist or terrorist campings experience? What kind of badges can one earn at the camp? Is there a weekend that parents can visit?

[Kolesar]

10. Turn your head and uvulate...eom

[Recursion]

13. The amazing thing is...

And again, this is just from the forms we were told to look out for in Iraq:

Do you need your doctor to complete your health history and sign?

It is not required though you must vouch that you are in sound physical condition.

Are there scholarships availble for destitute would be terrorists?

Tremendous amounts of funding opportunities, since funding a martyr counts as almsgiving (Zakah). Richer soldiers are expected to pay their own way.

Do you get placed in higher level classes if you have previous terrorist or terrorist campings experience?

Depends on what you mean by "terrorist". There were a very few Al Qaeda "terrorist" training camps but mostly they trained light infantry. To be a terrorist (ie, suicide operative striking against civilian targets) you generally had to prove yourself over many years, and you were generally expected to go start a cell more or less independently in your own country.

What kind of badges can one earn at the camp?

There was a certificate of completion for many of the programs -- we actually found a few of those though we suspect they were forgeries (ie, people trying to get street cred with Iraqi militias by faking Afghani and Chechen training).

Is there a weekend that parents can visit?

No, and if one's parents are sympathetic to the cause one was asked to say goodbye to them as if you were going directly to your death. If they were likely to turn you in to the authorities in your country, you were allowed to deceive them. In either case, you were exempt from the obligation to fight if you were the only financial support for your family, or engaged in religious studies.

[treestar]

18. Are there certificates of graduation, too?

Do you get certified somehow?

:rofl:

[Recursion]

11. Actually they do have them

We had them on a list of documents to "look for" in Iraq (those of us who could read basic Arabic had a LOT of extra reading to do...)

"Application" may give you the wrong impression; you aren't posting a CV or resume -- though you are required to list three references, preferably at least one of them a cleric. Mostly they want to make sure you have the stuff you need, enough money, no physical ailments, your family will be provided for in your absence, etc.

Some of the intercepted documents I've seen dumped by DoD and FBI are astounding in their banality, though, including a memorandum circulated after the Jyhadist Picnic in Turkey (I'm not kidding here) urging the participants to get their expense claims in soon so they could reimburse that fiscal year (and a ruling from a scholar that the reimbursement of funds counts as Zakah, which is why it was important to have it done that fiscal year, ie before Eid al Fitr). I don't know why, but that really amuses me. There was a joke email circulating a while back about one of the intercepted memos that included stuff like "get your expense claims to Ahmed in accounting by the end of the month" and it really floored me because that was pretty much what one of those actual memos said...

[BikeWriter]

21. Oh yeah, sign me up!

:rofl:

[Judi Lynn]

4. This is so sad..... No wonder the man has had trouble adjusting to life as a prisoner!

Also from the article:

Earlier this week, a CIA officer testified that the form was brought in December 2001 to an agency installation in Kandahar, Afghanistan, by a man who said he had found thousands of documents from what he believed was an al-Qaeda safe house after its occupants fled.

The partially completed five-page form includes Padilla's birth date, Oct. 18, 1970, and lists the nickname Abu Abdallah Al Muhajir, which prosecutors say was an alias for Padilla. The applicant wrote that he was a native speaker of English and Spanish, with carpentry skills, who studied Arabic and the Koran, made a hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and went to Yemen "as a way to go through for Jihad."

[TexasLawyer]

15. From dirty bomber to job applicant

Yes-- we've gone from claiming this man was inches away from blowing up a dirty bomb to, now, charging him with filling out an application form.

Even assuming he DID fill it it out, what does that mean?

[uppityperson]

7. k&r for our wonderful government.

Oh. My. God. It's not funny but all I can do is :rofl:

[Tyler Durden]

8. "Give three refences not related to you..."

This is just too fucking much.

Why were they supposed to be using these? For an ISO-9000 requirement for an audit?

[whopis01]

9. hmmmm.... here is a scary thought....

I wonder who has a more thorough and strict application process, the terrarists or TSA? After seeing this, I'm not sure....

[Old and In the Way]

12. Kick for the application.

This is really unbelievable. This looks like something cooked up in the Office of Special Plans. Given how the Nigerian "evidence" was a forgery, why wouldn't something like this be just as likely? This case was timed to help market the GWOT...we know Padilla got railroaded and there is no case to try him on.

I hope someone investigates the original...for all I know, that could be the breakfast menu / room service card at the Riyhad Holiday Inn.

[The Stranger]

14. "Someone must have traduced Joseph K. for without having done anything wrong,

he was arrested one fine morning."

[TexasLawyer]

16. "The application is the only known evidence"

From another article:

<snip>

The application is the only known evidence suggesting Padilla, 36, ever went to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden's network offered weapons and warfare training in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Neither Padilla nor his two co-defendants are on trial for any crime related to Sept. 11. They are charged with conspiracy to kill, kidnap or maim persons abroad and with material support to terrorists.

Their defense is that they were engaged in humanitarian actions in support of Muslims under siege in such places as Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo.

No organization name appears on the application, nor is Padilla's name on it. The applicant is identified in a section for nicknames or aliases as "Abu Abdallah Al-Mujahir," an Arabic phrase that means "Abdallah's father the Immigrant," FBI translator Nancy Khouri told the jury.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.nationlede18may18,0,7465742.story?coll=bal-attack-headlines

[treestar]

17. Bushco is incompetent no matter what they are doing

If this guy was actually a threat, they still have no proof and might have missed the chance to get it. It took them until 2006, what?

[gratuitous]

19. Aw jeez!

Not only does Padilla get to see the evidence against him, his lawyers get to challenge it, too? How does that amount to a fair trial if there's a possibility he could be found not guilty?

[Eugene]

20. Padilla trial witness: al-Qaida ran camp (used same application form)

Source: Associated Press

Padilla trial witness: al-Qaida ran camp

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 34 minutes ago

MIAMI - A member of the "Lackawanna Six" terrorist group testified Friday
that he prepared for jihad at an al-Qaida training camp that prosecutors
said was previously attended by terror suspect Jose Padilla.

Yahya Goba, a 30-year-old Yemeni-American convicted of terrorism support
charges, said in federal court that he filled out a "mujahedeen data form"
identical to the one allegedly completed by Padilla for the remote al-Farooq
camp outside Kandahar, Afghanistan.

-snip-

While at the camp in summer 2001, Goba said, he learned about war tactics,
plastic explosives and weapons such as AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades
and handguns. After the six-week course, Goba said he was told to provide
his U.S. address and contact information and to destroy his passport to
hide his travel movements, which he did by putting it in a washing machine.

Goba said he and several associates from Lackawanna, N.Y., went to the
camps to get ready for a possible mission related to jihad, or holy war.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_re_us/padilla_terror_charges

[formercia]

22. Chain of Custody

do they even have one for this 'application'?


This whole thing sounds bogus.