Opening statements preview months of evidence in Padilla trial

MIAMI -- After months of investigation, legal maneuvering and jury selection, federal prosecutors and attorneys for alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla finally get to present their cases in a trial expected to last into August.

Opening statements are scheduled today in the terrorism support trial of Padilla, a U.S. citizen, and two co-defendants.

"It is the single most important part of the trial in federal court," said Milton Hirsch, a prominent Miami defense lawyer not involved in the Padilla case. "If we expect people to understand days if not weeks of evidence, some of it obscure, we had better give them a conceptual basis in opening statements for doing so."

Padilla, 36, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert, has been in federal custody since his May 2002 arrest at O'Hare International Airport. He was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States and was held for three-and-a-half years at a Navy brig as an enemy combatant, but those allegations are not part of the Miami case.

"The crimes he has been charged with pale in comparison to the initial allegations," said University of Miami law professor Stephen Vladeck. "This is a far cry from being a major front in the government's war on terrorism."

Instead, Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, both 45, are accused of being part of a North American support cell for Islamic extremists in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. All have pleaded not guilty and face possible life in prison if convicted.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke refused to grant them separate trials, ruling that the government had ample evidence they were connected in a conspiracy, with Hassoun and Jayyousi as jihadist recruiters, fundraisers and suppliers, and Padilla as one of their recruits.

To prove a conspiracy, prosecutors will have to show that each of the three was involved in at least one act to provide material support to extremist groups. In Padilla's case, a key piece of evidence is an application to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan that prosecutors say he completed in July 2000 and which bears his fingerprints.

Defense lawyers will seek to raise questions in jurors' minds about the authenticity of the form, whether Padilla actually completed it himself and if there might be an alternative explanation for the presence of the fingerprints.

For Hassoun and Jayyousi, who were under FBI surveillance for much longer than Padilla, the jurors must interpret hundreds of telephone wiretaps, money transfers and entries in Jayyousi's Islam Report newsletter.

Hassoun allegedly spoke in code when referring to weapons and military supplies, substituting words like "soccer equipment" for guns and "tourism" for armed struggle, prosecutors say.

However, no specific acts of violence or victims are blamed on any of the defendants.

"The prosecution has to get the jurors to say that something reeks of terrorism here," Hirsch said. "If they can make the jury believe this is a referendum on terrorism, never mind the particulars."