Convicted U.S. terror plotter due to receive stiffer prison term

By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI (Reuters) - A federal judge in Miami is expected on Tuesday to sentence Jose Padilla, whose original 17-year punishment for a 2007 conviction on terror-plotting charges was deemed too lenient by an appeals court. In a deal signed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they would not seek more than 30 years in prison for Padilla as long as his lawyers did not introduce records related to alleged harsh conditions he endured during the 3 1/2 years he spent in a South Carolina military prison. Padilla, an al Qaeda recruit and the first American citizen deemed an enemy combatant, was convicted in August 2007 on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people abroad, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. His re-sentencing has been delayed many times by U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke as lawyers wrangled over his long criminal history and shared thousands of pages of classified documents. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was arrested in 2002 as he returned to Chicago from abroad, where he allegedly spent time at a military training camp in Afghanistan. He was accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city but was never charged with that. Then-President George W. Bush ordered him held as an enemy combatant and interrogated in a South Carolina military prison. Prosecutors later argued Padilla deserved a life sentence for his 2007 conviction on unrelated charges but Cooke rejected that sentence because Padilla did not commit acts of terrorism on U.S. soil, nor attacks on officials or a plot to overthrow the U.S. government. An appeals court ruled in 2011 that the 17-year sentence he ultimately received was not severe enough. In a 2012 appeal rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, Padilla said he was held in isolation for more than three years at the military prison, shackled for hours in painful “stress” positions and subjected to lengthy bouts of blinding light followed by total darkness. He has been held in a super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, awaiting re-sentencing. (Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Trott)