MIAMI – To the Bush administration, Jose Padilla’s path to terrorism was clear-cut: He was a convicted gang member in Chicago who later found Islam in South Florida before sojourning to the Middle East to become a soldier in “violent jihad.”

Padilla’s defense team paints a far different portrait: He was a troubled youth who straightened out his life after becoming a Muslim, then headed to the Middle East to immerse himself in Islamic culture.

Now, nearly five years after FBI agents arrested Padilla at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after he returned from Pakistan, America’s most notorious terror defendant – also dubbed the “dirty bomber” – will stand trial on Monday in a Miami federal courtroom.

Two other Muslim men – Sunrise computer programmer Adham Amin Hassoun and Detroit school administrator Kifah Wael Jayyousi – will stand alongside the 36-year-old Padilla. Each is accused of conspiring to assist Islamic extremists overseas. If convicted, the threesome face life in prison.

The trial begins with selection of a 12-person jury. It’s a challenge for both sides because of widespread publicity and the complex trial’s expected length – as many as three months. There’s also the specter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks hanging over the entire proceeding.

The jury questionnaire has nearly 100 questions – including one about the ability to keep an “open mind” about Arabs or Muslims charged with acts of violence.

“My biggest concern is publicity and the effect of that publicity,” said one of Padilla’s lawyers, Anthony Natale, last week. “If you say “dirty bomber,’ it rings the bong.”


Said Jayyousi’s attorney, William Swor: “Jury selection will probably be the most important process in this case.”

While there have been numerous high-profile terrorism cases prosecuted in the United States – including that of a Tampa professor – none has had the unusual mix of legal, military and political overtones.

Padilla was first accused in 2002 of plotting with al-Qaida to carry out a radiological “dirty bomb” attack on U.S. soil and to blow up apartment buildings in major U.S. cities.

But Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was never charged with those crimes as a designated “enemy combatant” from 2002 to 2005. That designation was dropped in November 2005, when he was charged in a broadly framed terror indictment in Miami. Missing from the charges: the dirty bomb allegations. He and the other defendants are instead charged with conspiring to “murder, kidnap and maim” people overseas and to provide “material support” for terrorist activity.

The case, described as “Padilla lite” because it lacks the dirty-bomb allegation, has not been as sensational as first envisioned by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Even U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who will preside over the trial, has been less than impressed. Last summer, she dismissed one charge, citing a violation of Padilla’s constitutional rights. Cooke even went so far as to say the prosecution’s case was “light on facts.”

But the decision by the judge, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Bush in 2003, was overturned on appeal.

That’s not to say the government hasn’t scored some pretrial legal victories. One example: Cooke’s recent ruling that Padilla is competent to stand trial, rejecting his lawyers’ claim that he could not help in his defense because he was tortured in military detention.

Much of the government’s case is built upon thousands of classified wiretaps of phone conversations among members of the alleged North American terror cell with links to the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area. The time frame: October 1993 to November 2001.

In the indictment, Hassoun, the suspected ringleader, and Jayyousi are accused of recruiting Mujahadeen fighters such as Padilla and raising funds for radical Islamic causes in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia, Afghanistan and Egypt.

But the charges make no mention of any specific attacks, suggesting that the government’s case might come down to one of guilt by association.

Hassoun befriended Padilla when they attended the Masjid Al-Imam mosque in Fort Lauderdale during the 1990s. In 1998, Padilla left South Florida to Egypt, where he got married and had two children but remained in contact with Hassoun.

According to the indictment, Padilla traveled overseas to receive training for “violent jihad.” On July 24, 2000, Padilla is alleged to have filled out a “Mujahadeen Data Form” in preparation for training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.


On Sept. 3, 2000, Hassoun allegedly called another suspected recruit, Mohamed Heshem Youssef, in Egypt to provide financing for Padilla’s travel and training. Youssef told Hassoun that Padilla “entered into the area of Osama,” a reference to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

According to court records, the FBI received Padilla’s Mujahadeen application from a covert CIA officer, who obtained it from an Afghan national in December 2001, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

The Afghan told the CIA officer stationed in Kandahar that he had found it along with other Mujahadeen forms in an abandoned al-Qaida safe house.


Padilla’s alleged al-Qaida form will be central to the government’s case. Prosecutors plan to put the CIA officer on the witness stand.

He will be using a disguise – a wig, eyeglasses and facial hair – to protect his identity. Padilla’s defense lawyers have said the CIA officer’s appearance is like putting a “ghost” on the stand.

Even though the form appears to link Padilla to al-Qaida, it is unclear exactly how the former Chicago gang member was recruited into the infamous terror group and what he specifically did to wage jihad. For the government, the stakes in the Padilla prosecution could not be higher. The Bush administration has been sharply criticized for detaining Padilla as an enemy combatant in a naval brig for more than three years without charging him.

When the administration was confronted with the likelihood of having to justify his detention before the U.S. Supreme Court in late 2005, Bush dropped his designation and the Justice Department charged him with being a recruit for the North American terror cell in the Miami indictment.

“If the government wins this case, it would be vindicated in a real way as far as what it has implied all along about Padilla and his involvement in terrorism,” said University of Miami law professor Stephen Vladeck, who had filed a Supreme Court brief challenging Padilla’s detention. “A conviction could have the unintended effect that the end did justify the means.”

A not guilty verdict would be a colossal setback for the administration and its war on terror.

“If the government were not able to make a case against someone who was painted as such a notorious and disreputable figure, it would be very damaging to its credibility,” Vladeck said. “It would send a disturbing message about the strength of the government’s case and the strength of the allegations that have always accompanied this story.”

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(c) 2007, The Miami Herald.

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ARCHIVE PHOTO on MCT Direct (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): TERROR PADILLA

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