Biography
Jose Padilla is a U.S. citizen arrested at Chicago O'Hare on May 8, 2002 and, a month later, transferred to military custody as an "enemy combatant" — held roughly three and a half years in the Charleston naval brig without ordinary criminal charge, in isolation conditions his lawyers said destroyed his mental health, while his case (Rumsfeld v. Padilla) tested the limits of executive detention of citizens. Moved to civilian court in January 2006 as the Supreme Court neared review, he was convicted in 2007 of terrorism-conspiracy charges and resentenced in 2014 to 21 years. He is best described as a disputed national-security detainee rather than a prisoner of conscience: the arbitrary military detention of a citizen is the civil-liberties core of his case, while the government alleged, and a jury found, substantial al-Qaeda involvement.
Amnesty International’s 2007 report records an October 2006 motion by José Padilla’s lawyers seeking dismissal of criminal charges on grounds of alleged torture during military detention. The motion remained pending at the report’s year-end cutoff.