WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce Tuesday an 11-count indictment against accused "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, government officials said.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is expected to announce the charges during an 11 a.m. ET news conference, the sources said.
Officials have said previously that Padilla is an "enemy combatant" who intended to conduct terrorism against the United States.
He has been accused of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States and to blow up apartment buildings using natural gas.
The Brooklyn-born Padilla, 34, a former gang member twice imprisoned in the United States, was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois.
A convert to Islam, he took the name Abdullah al-Muhajir when he moved to Egypt in 1998. He allegedly trained at al Qaeda's military camps in Afghanistan in 2000 after being recruited by a Yemeni man he met on a pilgrimage to Mecca, according to the government.
The Justice Department said last year that Padilla has told interrogators that before the September 11 terror attacks he met with al Qaeda's late military chief, Mohamed Atef, about the apartment bombing plot, and Abu Zubaydah, the terror group's accused operations chief who is now in custody, about stealing radioactive material to be used in a crude explosive device.
FBI agents followed Padilla from Pakistan to O'Hare, arrested him on a material witness warrant and transferred him to New York.
On the eve of a court proceeding to challenge the warrant, President Bush designated him such a "grave threat" to national security that he was labeled an "enemy combatant" and handed over to the military.
Padilla has been in military custody at a brig in Charleston, South Carolina, for more than three years. He will be charged in Miami, Florida, sources said.
