Terrorism Notebook
Dirty-bomb suspect can see lawyer

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Jose Padilla has been held since May 2002, when he was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on a flight from Pakistan as a suspect in an alleged al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.

For most of the time since then he has been held at the naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

Calling Padilla "an enemy combatant," the Pentagon said he "will be allowed access to a lawyer subject to appropriate security restrictions." The access is "a matter of discretion and military authority" and "is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent," the Pentagon statement said.

In December, a federal court ruled that President Bush lacked the power to hold Padilla. But last month a federal appeals court approved the administration's request to delay the order while the Justice Department appeals it to the Supreme Court, which has agreed to review the constitutionality of indefinitely holding U.S. citizens.

Lawyer says bin Laden's driver not part of regime

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Osama bin Laden's $200-a-month driver is being held at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, but the man had no connection to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network, his defense attorney said yesterday.

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan, 34, left Yemen in 1996 for Afghanistan. He planned to continue on to Tajikistan to join Muslims fighting against former Soviet communists but was forced to take a job to support his family, said his attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift.

Hamdan began working for bin Laden in 1997 on his farm in the Afghan city of Kandahar, earning about $200 a month driving a truck and moving farm workers to the fields, said Swift, who just returned from a visit to the U.S. prison camp in eastern Cuba.

Neither Hamdan nor any of the other 660 some detainees at the camp have been charged. He is one of four chosen to stand trial at possible military tribunals and given access to defense attorneys. He is the first detainee at Guantánamo publicly identified as having a link to bin Laden.

Spanish detainee headed home from Guantánamo
 
A Spanish detainee at the U.S. military jail in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was headed to his home country yesterday to face questioning and possible prosecution as an alleged associate of the al-Qaida terrorist network, U.S. officials said.

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, 29, is the first of dozens of detainees from several nations who will soon be repatriated, officials said. Some will remain in custody and face additional investigation in their homelands, while others are scheduled to be released, they said.

Among those expected to be sent home to jail in coming weeks are some or all of the eight Russians held at Guantánamo, U.S. officials said.

Also...

The Brazilian government has made permanent the requirement that visiting Americans be fingerprinted and photographed. ... A gunman killed an Afghan intelligence official and then blew himself up in Khost yesterday in the country's third suicide attack this year. The Taliban took credit for the attack.

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