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American Morning
More Information About American Who Allegedly Plotted to Use Dirty Bomb Against U.S.
Aired June 11, 2002 - 08:02 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up Front this morning, we are starting to learn a little bit more about Abdullah Al Muhajir, the American citizen who allegedly plotted to use a dirty bomb against the United States. One thing we do know is that he was arrested as he stepped off a plane in Chicago's O'Hare airport.
CNN bureau chief Jeff Flock joins us now.
Good morning, Jeff.
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you.
It really is not computing yet with a lot of people here in Chicago. They knew him as Jose Padilla here. Perhaps we can take another look at that grainy mug shot. That is not from Chicago, but indeed from an arrest that he had down in Miami. He spent most of his life here in Chicago, not as Muhajir but as Jose Padilla.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, came here at about age four or five. Let's take a look at the neighborhood and the house where he grew up. It is a graystone two-flat in the largely Hispanic Logan Square neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago. We're told by family friends that his father died shortly after his birth, did not live with him here in Chicago. Taking a look inside that hall now, we get some sense of what it looked like. We are told that he lived with two brothers and two sisters growing up.
He was a Catholic boy, apparently, and he had a little small bedroom, perhaps you see there, off the kitchen. That is where he stayed. Again, still trying to get a sense of him. We talked to a family friend who says she knew him growing up. He was a good kid and never really got into trouble.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I remember him as a real nice boy. He was a real nice boy, very sweet person. He used to be in his house with his mother, helping his mother. I never saw him going around with any bad kids.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FLOCK: But apparently he did fall in with a bad crowd, apparently a street gang. He spent much of his time here inside juvenile detention lock-ups. This is a place that we visited some years ago, and it's a place where he was held for a time. There were some conflicting reports on what he was convicted for. Initial reports were that he had been convicted for murder as a juvenile.
Not true, based on our best information: aggravated battery, apparently, armed robbery and attempted armed robbery, had a string of juvenile difficulties, then moved on to Florida, where he also got into some difficulty down there; apparently a road rage incident down there in which he fired at another motorist, wound up for about a year in the county jail.
But nothing, really, in all of this, Paula, seems to put it all together and goes to what happened and got him to the point where the government says he is right now.
How, for example, he did wind up converting to Islam? Initial government sources seem to indicate there was some sort of a jailhouse conversion, but he was only in a juvenile lockup in Chicago and the Broward County jail in Florida, never did any hard prison time. A family friend we talked to seemed to indicate that he married a woman of Muslim descent and moved with her to the Middle East, and that's when it took place. But at this point, we're not 100 percent sure.
ZAHN: It also doesn't make sense how the Al Qaeda leadership had any faith in this guy at all on a tremendous responsibility here. Any new details on that?
FLOCK: No, not at all. I'd like to poke around more in Florida on that one, but, no, that is just not coming out at this point and the government's not being tremendously helpful with that, either.
ZAHN: All right, thanks, Jeff. Jeff Flock, our bureau chief, reporting from Chicago this morning.
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