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CNN Live Today

Jose Padilla Had Long Record with Police

Aired June 11, 2002 - 11:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Up first this hour on CNN, a closer look at the suspect in the so-called dirty bomb plot. He grew up in Chicago as Jose Padilla. Today, he is being held in military custody under the name of Abdullah al Muhajir.

CNN Chicago bureau chief Jeff Flock has more on the man and the mayhem that officials say he was trying to plot -- Jeff, good morning.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, good morning to you.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said today the desire is not so much to punish this man as to find out what he knows. But they may be waiting a while, because based on what we have learned about the man known as Jose Padilla, he has, in some sense, made a career of not cooperating with authorities.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FLOCK (voice-over): Jose Padilla grew up here in the largely Hispanic Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago in this stone two flat where an American flag now hangs in the window. He could walk to school just across the street. If he had any anger toward the government then, he didn't show it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, never. Never.

FLOCK: Nellie Ojeta (ph) lives in the apartment where Padilla used to and remembers he and his family well. It looks different now, but this small room off the kitchen was Padilla's bedroom. Born October 18, 1970 in New York, he moved to Chicago just before starting school. Ojeta (ph) says he had two sisters and two brothers and that his father died not long after he was born.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I describe him like a very nice person, a very sweet person. And I have nothing bad to say about him, nothing at all.

FLOCK: Others did. By the time he was 15, Padilla was in trouble, living and going to school here at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, charged within aggravated battery, armed robbery and attempted armed robbery. It's a juvenile record, so the details are sealed, but he ended up doing three years, paroled just before his 18th birthday, discharged at 21. By then, he moved to Florida and was arrested after a road rage incident at this intersection by these two sunrise Florida police.

LT. CHARLES VITALE, FLORIDA POLICE: As a result of that verbal altercation, Mr. Padilla fired one round from a handgun in the direction of the other vehicle.

FLOCK: Padilla spent almost a year here at the Broward County Jail awaiting trial. When he was finally convicted, he was sentenced to time served and released. Five years later, in 1997, he was working at this Holiday Inn outside Fort Lauderdale. After failing to show up in court following another traffic stop, where he gave a false name, a warrant was issued for his arrest. But he apparently fell through the cracks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLOCK: Daryn, of course the big question is how did he wind up where he is today, in some sense, for that conversion to Islam? The initial sources at the Justice Department indicated that perhaps it was a jailhouse conversion.

But we have talked to family and friends who say that he married a woman who was herself a Muslim and made the conversion at that time and then moved overseas, coming back here to Chicago only last month on what the government says was a reconnaissance mission for terror.

That's the latest - back to you.

KAGAN: All right. Jeff Flock in Chicago - thank you so much.

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