Wall Street Journal Online (11.22.05).

Dirty Bomb Suspect Padilla Is Indicted by Grand Jury.

WASHINGTON -- A grand jury indicted "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla on criminal charges in Miami, according to charges unsealed Tuesday.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was expected to discuss the indictment at a news conference in Washington.

Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert, has been held as an "enemy combatant" in Defense Department custody for more than three years. The Bush administration had resisted calls to charge and try him in civilian courts.

The indictment avoids a Supreme Court showdown. Mr. Padilla's lawyers had asked justices to review his case last month, and the Bush administration was facing a deadline next Monday for filing its legal arguments.

"They're avoiding what the Supreme Court would say about American citizens. That's an issue the administration did not want to face," said Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor who specializes in national security. "There's no way that the Supreme Court would have ducked this issue."

The Bush administration has said Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, sought to blow up hotels and apartment buildings in the U.S. and planned an attack with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.

Mr. Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. The federal government has said he was trained in weapons and explosives by members of al Qaeda. Although the Justice Department has said that Mr. Padilla was readying attacks in the U.S., the charges against him and four others allege they were part of a conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country and provide material support to terrorists abroad.

The others indicted are: Adham Amin Hassoun, Mohammed Hesham Youssef, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, and Kassem Daher. Mr. Hassoun also was indicted on eight additional charges, including perjury, obstruction of justice and illegal firearm possession.

Mr. Hassoun, a Palestinian computer programmer who moved to Florida in 1989, was arrested in June 2002 for allegedly overstaying his student visa. Prosecutors previously described him as a former associate of Mr. Padilla.

In March, U.S. District Judge Henry F. Floyd in Charleston had ordered the government to either charge or release Mr. Padilla, rejecting government arguments that the president held any power -- either granted by Congress or inherent in his office as commander-in-chief -- to divest American citizens arrested on U.S. soil of constitutional rights to a civilian trial by labeling them as "enemy combatants."

In a stern rebuke, Judge Floyd wrote that to rule "otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this country's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."