Padilla Pleads Not Guilty To Terror

(CBS/AP)  Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant," pleaded not guilty Thursday to criminal charges alleging he was part of a secret network that supported violent Muslim extremists around the world.

The plea, followed by a judge's refusal to set bail for Padilla, came one week after he was transferred from military to civilian custody.

"Absolutely not guilty," said Michael Caruso, one of Padilla's lawyers. Padilla did not speak during the hearing.

In denying bail, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber sided with prosecutors who said Padilla likely would flee to avoid trial and that the charges — including allegations that he attended an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan — made him dangerous.

"How much more dangerous can someone be than someone who attended a terrorist training camp?" prosecutor Stephanie Pell said.

Padilla, 35, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in May 2002 and held at a military brig in South Carolina without criminal charges, initially on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States.

His case raised questions about whether U.S. citizens detained on American soil could be held without trial in the name of the war on terrorism.

Before the Supreme Court could decide whether to take up Padilla's case, the Justice Department presented the case to a civilian grand jury, which indicted him in November.

The charges do not involve the "dirty bomb" allegations or claims that he plotted as an al Qaeda operative to blow up apartment buildings in major U.S. cities.

"Remember he is pleading not guilty to charges that are far less sinister than the ones leveled against him several years ago by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who called him a dirty bomb suspect and accused of him of plotting to explode a radiological device," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "None of that is in this case."

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