Hurrah! Jose Padilla indicted!

The past couple years I have been ranting about the detention of Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained on US soil, held without charge in a navy brig in South Carolina, and no contact with his lawyer. Throughout, I didn't doubt that he was indeed a bad guy, but the constitutionality of the method and manner of his detention greatly concerned me. So he's finally been indicted. Hurrah! This is how American justice is supposed to work. But there's a problem.

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held by the Bush administration for three years without charges as an enemy combatant plotting a "dirty bomb" attack in the United States, has been indicted on charges unrelated to any potential terrorist attack in this country.

Padilla, 35, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam, was indicted by a Miami federal grand jury Thursday on charges he and four others were part of a U.S.-based terrorism conspiracy to "murder, maim, and kidnap" people overseas, Justice Department officials announced at a press conference in Washington today.

So, after being held unconstitutionally for three years, he is not charged with crimes he was supposedly being detained for? I assume that his questionable detention invalidated any charges that might have been related to the dirty bomb allegations. This is the basic problem with the "enemy combatant" designation and detention in that all evidence related is not admissible in court.

Quite frankly, I'm ecstatic to see the guy indicted and hope that the charges stick, but can the president now, solely on his own designation, hold enemy combatants for such a period that evidence of other crimes can be dug up? Although I'm happy to see Padilla returned to the judicial system, by placing these charges, the government has prevented any court decisions which might have prevented these tactics from being applied to other American citizens.