Hooray, I've Been Indicted

By Viveca Novak

Being charged with conspiring to aid overseas jihadists normally wouldn't be good news--unless you've been in isolation for three years with no charges to fight. But when Jose Padilla learned last week that he had been indicted, "he was extremely happy," his attorney Andrew Patel told TIME. Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held as an "enemy combatant" by the military since mid-2002, will be transferred from a Navy brig to a federal prison and, more important, will get a trial date.

By moving Padilla into the criminal-justice system, the Bush Administration may be able to avoid a Supreme Court review of Padilla's status as an enemy combatant, a thorny legal issue. But his attorneys note that if the court doesn't rule on the matter, other U.S. citizens could be detained indefinitely without being charged, as could Padilla again.

Missing from the indictment are allegations that Padilla planned to detonate a dirty bomb or blow up apartment buildings. Evidence for those charges came from captured al-Qaeda helmsmen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, who have undergone the sort of coercive interrogation treatment, including waterboarding, that can induce people to lie. "It would have been very difficult to use that in court," said a Justice Department official. Expect pretrial skirmishes over such issues as access to classified information and, possibly, the effects of three years of isolation on Padilla's psyche. Said Patel: "He's been alone, with a capital A."