Different Strokes, Different Folks

[struggle4progress]

Given Tuesday's dramatic disclosures by the government about Padilla's purported role in a terror plot, it's hard to find enough factual differences between the Moussaoui and Padilla cases to justify the dramatically different ways in which the two terror suspects have been treated. In fact, perhaps the most important differences between the two men suggests that it is Padilla, and not Moussaoui, who deserves more due process now and into the future. Padilla is a U.S. citizen. Moussaoui is not. Moussaoui admitted in open court in 2002 that he is a loyal al Qaeda foot soldier. So far, we haven't heard boo from Padilla himself.
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So what to make of this different treatment? The government is entitled, after all, to employ all legal means available not just to punish criminals but to try to prevent terrorism before it occurs. The feds Tuesday used the Padilla information to justify why he has been held, incommunicado and without the ability to contest the charges against him, for the past few years. "We now know much of what Jose Padilla knows, and what we have learned confirms that the president of the United States made the right call and that that call saved lives," prosecutor Comey said.
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The release of the information about Padilla likely won't affect the Supreme Court's review of his case. That review focuses not upon the strength or truth of the allegations against him but upon the right of the Executive Branch to keep his case away from the purview of the courts. Comey acknowledged as much Tuesday when he said the government won't try to supplement the Court's record on the eve of an expected decision. Still, it's hard not to see the timing of the release as anything other than a public-relations ploy designed to tug on the emotions of the justices. After two years of near-silence about Padilla, why would it suddenly become appropriate to release all this detail — just as the Justices are perhaps crossing their "T's" and dotting their "I's" on a ruling expected before the end of the month?

Government critics charged Tuesday that Comey was trying Padilla in the court of public opinion instead of in a real courtroom. That's true. The now-detailed allegations against Padilla seem to warrant federal charges against him — many of the same charges that Moussaoui now faces. The feds, however, say that won't happen because incriminating information about Padilla, from Padilla himself, could not be used against him at a regular criminal trial. But there is other, corroborating evidence against him as well that might support an indictment and a conviction. And who's to say that Padilla, like Moussaoui, won't be willing to talk voluntarily during the course of a regular civilian case? These accused terrorists seem to have a penchant for wanting to tell the world about who and what they are.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=85174