Padilla case "very light on facts" and the judge doesn't like it

this is good... a judge sticking up for due process and demanding that the government start making a real case instead of baseless allegations and throwing around all this enemy combatant and indefinite detention crap...

A federal judge ordered prosecutors to turn over more evidence to back up allegations that Jose Padilla and two co-defendants conspired to kill, injure or kidnap people overseas as part of a global Islamic terrorist network.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said Tuesday she agreed with claims made by defense attorneys that the indictment against Padilla and the others is "very light on facts" that would link the defendants to specific acts of terrorism or victims.

"We are so shooting in the dark," said Jeanne Baker, one of the attorneys representing defendant Adham Amin Hassoun. "The government has to tell us, what are these acts they conspired to commit?"

[...]

Cooke ordered the government to flesh out its charges by providing defense lawyers with names of unindicted co-conspirators, broad descriptions of intended victims of alleged acts of violence and specifics about false statements Hassoun allegedly made about the meaning of phone calls intercepted by the government.

[...]

Padilla was designated an "enemy combatant" and held for 3 1/2 years without charge by the Bush administration shortly after his May 2002 arrest. He was accused then of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city.

Padilla was added as a defendant in the Miami terror support cell case last year amid a legal struggle over President Bush's authority to hold him indefinitely.

this shit has to cease...

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