More Padilla weirdness
According to this Times of London report, some FBI officials believe Jose Padilla was aware that he was going to be apprehended when he landed in Chicago and may even have deliberately contrived his own arrest:
Padilla, who also used the name Abdullah al-Mujahir, walked knowingly into the hands of the federal authorities at Chicago’s international airport five weeks ago.The FBI strongly suspects that Padilla knew he was being tailed before his arrest. Many seats around him on the Swiss International Air Lines flight from Zurich to Chicago were taken by agents from the FBI and Swiss intelligence. But even before that, officials believe Padilla was tipped off that he was being followed after agents approached a travel agent he had visited.
The FBI remains puzzled why Padilla should have declared $8,000 on his customs form, rather than the full $10,000 he picked up in Zurich. The discrepancy allowed the authorities to detain him on a currency violation which he could easily have avoided.
(via Junkyard Blog.)
Posted by Dr. Frank at June 22, 2002 03:10 PM | TrackBack