[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida [official website] on Tuesday resentenced convicted terrorist Jose Padilla [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] to 21 years in prison. Judge Marcia Cooke resentenced Padilla after the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in 2011 that Padilla’s 17-year sentence was too lenient [JURIST report] and ordered a new sentencing hearing. Padilla was an al Qaeda recruit and first US citizen considered an enemy combatant in the age of terrorism. The charges on which Padilla was convicted included providing material support to terrorism, conspiracy to murder, and kidnapping and maiming people abroad. Prosecutors, who had originally sought a life sentence, agreed not to seek more than 30 years as long as Padilla’s lawyers did not introduce evidence of the harsh detention conditions Padilla faced in a South Carolina military prison.

Padilla’s case has been ongoing for years in the federal court system. In June of 2012 the US Supreme Court declined to accept Padilla’s appeal challenging the dismissal [JURIST reports] of his lawsuit against US officials for allegedly illegally detaining him at a military jail in South Carolina. Padilla was arrested in 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and thereafter detained as an enemy combatant. He was convicted on terrorism charges in 2007 and originally sentenced [JURIST reports] to 17 years in prison.