Closings set in Padilla terror trial
By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press
Five years and three months after he was arrested and accused of involvement in an al-Qaida "dirty bomb" plot, Jose Padilla's fate will soon rest in the hands of jurors.
Prosecutors were scheduled Monday to begin closing arguments in the trial of Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi on terrorism support charges that do not include the "dirty bomb" allegations.
Prosecutors want jurors to convict Padilla largely on a five-page "mujahedeen data form" he supposedly filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. The 36-year-old U.S. citizen was held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years.
The closing arguments mark the final phase of an unprecedented legal journey for Padilla, who has been in custody since his May 8, 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
His lawyers fought for years against President Bush's decision to designate him an enemy combatant, taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. With that case drawing closer, the Bush administration decided in late 2005 to add Padilla to an existing Miami terror support indictment and drop the enemy combatant designation.
The CIA recovered the al-Qaida "mujahedeen data form" that is central in the case in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in late 2001. It contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints, one of his alleged Muslim alias names, his true birthday, notes the applicant's ability to speak English, Spanish and Arabic and has other identifying details.
But there is little other hard evidence linking Padilla, a Muslim convert, to al-Qaida or to the alleged North American terror support cell prosecutors say was operated by Hassoun, Jayyousi and others. Thousands of hours of FBI wiretap intercepts from 1993 to 2001 include numerous conversations of Hassoun and Jayyousi, but Padilla's voice is heard on only seven.
(Continued here.)
Associated Press
Five years and three months after he was arrested and accused of involvement in an al-Qaida "dirty bomb" plot, Jose Padilla's fate will soon rest in the hands of jurors.
Prosecutors were scheduled Monday to begin closing arguments in the trial of Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi on terrorism support charges that do not include the "dirty bomb" allegations.
Prosecutors want jurors to convict Padilla largely on a five-page "mujahedeen data form" he supposedly filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. The 36-year-old U.S. citizen was held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years.
The closing arguments mark the final phase of an unprecedented legal journey for Padilla, who has been in custody since his May 8, 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
His lawyers fought for years against President Bush's decision to designate him an enemy combatant, taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. With that case drawing closer, the Bush administration decided in late 2005 to add Padilla to an existing Miami terror support indictment and drop the enemy combatant designation.
The CIA recovered the al-Qaida "mujahedeen data form" that is central in the case in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in late 2001. It contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints, one of his alleged Muslim alias names, his true birthday, notes the applicant's ability to speak English, Spanish and Arabic and has other identifying details.
But there is little other hard evidence linking Padilla, a Muslim convert, to al-Qaida or to the alleged North American terror support cell prosecutors say was operated by Hassoun, Jayyousi and others. Thousands of hours of FBI wiretap intercepts from 1993 to 2001 include numerous conversations of Hassoun and Jayyousi, but Padilla's voice is heard on only seven.
(Continued here.)
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