Bomb suspect is Hispanic criminal

The suspect at the centre of the plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a US city was last night revealed to have a history of crime, including membership of one of America's most notorious street gangs.

Jos? Padilla, 31, who changed his name to Abdullah al Muhajir after converting to Islam, joined the Latin Kings as a teenager in Chicago and is said to have been involved in a gangland murder when he was 13.

FBI officials have refused to reveal his record as a juvenile, but he is known to have been arrested five times in Chicago for assault and other crimes between 1985 and 1991.

Born in Brooklyn in 1970, Padilla moved to Chicago with his parents when he was four. His baby-faced looks won him the nickname "Pudgy" - but from his early childhood he showed a tendency towards the episodes of violence which marked his life.

After a spell in school for troubled children, Padilla moved to Florida to live with a girlfriend and work in hotels. He struggled to hold down a job, but found acceptance with the infamous Latin Kings.

He was sent to prison in 1991 after a road rage incident in Fort Lauderdale which he fired a shot at another driver after a minor accident. He served a total of 195 days in prison for the offence.

While on probation he began his conversion to Islam and changed his name. But despite his religious conversion, he continued to commit offences of violence. While serving a subsequent one-year prison sentence he attacked a sheriff's deputy and was arrested nearly a dozen times in 1997 for traffic offences that included driving without a licence and speeding.

It is thought he met Abu Zubeida, said to be Osama bin Laden's chief of staff and the highest ranking al Qaeda official to be captured, in Afghanistan last year, prior to the World Trade Center attacks, then travelled to Pakistan where he was taught the basics of handling a "dirty bomb" at an al-Qaeda safehouse in Lahore.

He also travelled to Karachi at Zubeida's request to meet al Qaeda chiefs to discuss plots to bomb hotels in America. Padilla was arrested after getting off a flight from Pakistan on 8 May at Chicago's International Airport.

Authorities now say Padilla was only in the early stages of a plan to explode a dirty bomb. He had not decided on a time or location for the bombing, nor had he obtained any of the radioactive material needed to build it.

As an "enemy combatant" he can be held almost indefinitely in military custody without being charged. Security sources say Padilla's identity was revealed during the questioning of Zubeida, of whom nothing has been seen since his arrest in Faisalabad in March.

Zubeida is said to have briefed his US interrogators about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 37-year-old Kuwaiti agent behind the operational planning of the 11 September attacks.

Padilla's mother, Estela, had five children. A woman answering the phone at his mother's Florida home yesterday refused to comment.

Nelly Ojeda, 64, who knew Padilla when he was a teenager in Chicago yesterday said: "He was so quiet, so nice. He didn't look like a person who would do something like that. It would surprise me if he did it. He was always very quiet and respectful. I have nothing bad to say about him."

US Attorney General John Ashcroft said: "We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or dirty bomb, in the United States.

"He trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices."

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