The US won a legal victory in its “war on terror” on Thursday when a court convicted Jose Padilla, an American originally accused of plotting to build a “dirty bomb”, on unrelated terrorism charges.

Mr Padilla, a convert to Islam, was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of conspiring with al-Qaeda to explode a radiological bomb in the US and was detained for more than three years in military custody as an “enemy combatant”.