The US:An American citizen who was held without charge for more than three years as an "illegal enemy combatant" finally went on trial yesterday - but not for any of the crimes the Bush administration originally claimed he committed.
Jose Padilla (36) and two others appeared in court in Miami yesterday, charged with operating an Islamist support cell in southern Florida that sent money and fighters to Muslim extremist groups in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
"Jose Padilla was an al-Qaeda terrorist trainee providing the ultimate form of material support - himself. Padilla was serious, he was focused, he was secretive. Padilla had cut himself off from most things in his life that did not concern his radical view of the Islamic religion," prosecutor Brian Frazier said in his opening statement.
Born in New York and raised in Chicago, where he was a small-time criminal and gang member before converting to Islam, Mr Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in May 2002, as he returned from a visit to Pakistan. A month later, President George Bush designated him an "illegal enemy combatant" who could no longer enjoy the protection of US law and ordered that he should be detained in a military prison.
Then attorney general John Ashcroft said that Mr Padilla had been plotting to blow up high-rise apartment buildings in New York by renting as many apartments as possible in the same building and leaking natural gas into them. The administration also claimed Mr Padilla was involved in a plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the US.
In November 2005, the administration transferred Mr Padilla to a federal detention centre and charged him with conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, just before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the legality of his detention as an enemy combatant. The court was expected to clarify Mr Padilla's rights as a US citizen to a speedy trial, legal representation and other constitutional protections.
There was no mention of the "dirty bomb" or gas explosion plots yesterday, and Judge Marcia Cooke has ruled that evidence obtained during Mr Padilla's interrogations in military custody is inadmissible.
Mr Padilla's lawyers claim he was tortured and held in such extreme isolation, in a blacked- out, soundproof cell, that he is psychologically unfit to stand trial. However, the judge ruled his mental capacity had not been damaged to the point that he should be spared a trial.
At the heart of the prosecution's case is a single document - an application to become an Islamist fighter that Mr Padilla is alleged to have filled out in July 2000. Prosecutors plan to call a covert CIA operative to testify in disguise about the document and to introduce transcripts from wiretapped conversations among the three defendants.
The trial is expected to continue for three months.