Al-Qaida suspect Padilla refiles lawsuit

updated 2:28 p.m. ET July 6, 2004

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A lawyer for Jose Padilla, the man accused of being part of an al-Qaida plot to set off a radiological “dirty” bomb and being held at the Navy brig in Charleston, has refiled his lawsuit against the federal government.

An attorney for the New York-born defendant said Tuesday she filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Charleston after the U.S. Supreme Court decided last week that Padilla’s original case, which named the commander of the Charleston brig, should not have been filed in New York.

“We have to just move forward,” said attorney Donna Newman, who filed the lawsuit Friday.

The Supreme Court justices did not address the question of whether President Bush had authority to designate Padilla an enemy combatant or whether indefinite detention without charges or trial violated his constitutional rights.

The government said Padilla proposed the idea for a bomb that would distribute radioactive debris to a top al-Qaida terrorism coordinator who has since been arrested in Pakistan.

Padilla was arrested in May 2002 when he returned from a trip to Pakistan.

When Padilla met with Newman at the brig in March, it was the first time in nearly two years he had been able to see an attorney.

In the case of the other U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant, the Supreme Court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, arrested in Afghanistan, does have the right to use U.S. courts to challenge his detention and status. The decision overturned a lower court’s ruling that the government had wide latitude to hold Hamdi and deny him access to courts because he was caught fighting against the United States on foreign soil during wartime.

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