Federal prosecutors in Miami may indict José Padilla — a former local resident dubbed the dirty-bomb suspect — for allegedly aiding a terrorist group run by an Egyptian convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, says the Miami Herald. Investigators are looking at Padilla’s links to Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik convicted in 1995 and serving a life term for conspiring to blow up the United Nations, New York FBI headquarters, and two tunnels and a bridge linking New Jersey to Manhattan.
Padilla, a U.S. citizen detained as an enemy combatant by the government without charges for two years, is challenging his incarceration since the FBI grabbed him in Chicago after he returned from Pakistan in 2002. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said Padilla mistakenly appealed his detention in a New York federal court and must pursue it in South Carolina, where he is being held in a naval brig. Law enforcement sources said prosecutors could seek an indictment of Padilla before a court decides whether he should remain in custody without being charged. The U.S. attorney’s office refused comment on the case, first reported by The Daily Business Review.