José Padilla (born October 18, 1970 in Brooklyn, New York), also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah, is
a United States citizen convicted of aiding terrorists.
Padilla was arrested in Chicago on May 8, 2002, and was detained as a material witness until June 9, 2002, when President George W. Bush designated him an illegal enemy combatant and transferred him to a military prison, arguing that he was thereby not entitled to trial in civilian courts. Padilla was held for three-and-a-half years as an "enemy combatant" after his arrest in 2002 on suspicion of plotting a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack. That charge was dropped and his case was moved to a civilian court after pressure from civil liberties groups.
On January 3, 2006, he was transferred to a Miami, Florida, jail to face criminal conspiracy charges. On August 16, 2007, José Padilla was found guilty, by a federal jury, of charges against him that he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism. He was widely described in media as a suspect of planning to build and explode a "dirty bomb" in the United States, but he was not convicted on this charge.
On January 22, 2008, Padilla was sentenced by Judge Marcia G. Cooke of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to 17 years and four months in prison. His mother, Estela Ortega Lebron was relieved but announced that they would appeal the judgment: "You have to understand that the government was asking for 30 years to life sentence in prison. We have a chance to appeal, and in the appeal we're gonna do better."[1].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Padilla_(prisoner)