9/11 a presence in Padilla trial

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago

The Sept. 11 attacks cast a long shadow over the terrorism support trial of Jose Padilla and his two co-defendants, with prosecutors constantly emphasizing al-Qaida connections and some of the most riveting testimony given by Osama bin Laden himself in the form of a decade-old TV interview.

Even though most of the evidence involved 1990s conflict zones such as Chechnya and Bosnia, it was Padilla's form completed in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan that linked the three defendants to the terrorist group blamed for the 2001 attacks that killed some 3,000 people in the U.S.

To drive that point home for jurors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier mentioned al-Qaida 91 times in his opening statement and more than 100 times in his closing, according to court transcripts.

"There's the old saying that when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas," said Michael Greenberger, law professor and director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security. "It's fair game for the prosecutors to mention al-Qaida and for Osama bin Laden to be portrayed."

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible life prison terms at their Dec. 5 sentencing after a jury convicted them Thursday of murder conspiracy and terrorism material support charges. Jurors deliberated just 11 hours after a three-month trial. They have declined to talk to reporters about their verdict.

Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen, was held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years after his May 2002 arrest on a supposed al-Qaida mission to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the U.S. He was added to the Miami terror support case in late 2005, with the "dirty bomb" allegations quietly discarded.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke often reminded the jury that the case was not about Sept. 11 and dozens of jurors were struck from the panel because they had expressed prejudices related to the attacks or doubted their ability to be fair.

Yet it was difficult not to think about Sept. 11 when bin Laden darkly threatened the U.S. in a seven-minute video clip played on a giant screen for jurors on June 26. The video, from a 1997 interview on CNN, was played over defense objections, particularly from Padilla's lawyers who said there was no evidence he had ever seen it.

Jayyousi lawyer William Swor said repeatedly during the trial that prosecutors were attempting to link Muslims as a group to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida. The key defense argument for Jayyousi and Hassoun was that they were providing humanitarian aid for persecuted Muslims as required by Islam; one of the five key pillars of the faith is aiding the poor and needy.

"Non-Muslims who made the same statements and did the same actions would not have been convicted," Swor said after the verdict.

Prosecutors, however, said the clear intent of the defendants as reflected in some of the 300,000 wiretap intercepts collected by the FBI in the case was to support violent jihad around the world to help establish fundamentalist Islamic regimes modeled after the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan.

The use of code words like "football" and "tourism" to mean "jihad" and "eggplant" and "zucchini" to mean military weaponry underscored the secret, illegal nature of what the men were doing, Frazier said.

"They wanted to recruit, fund and train fighters," Frazier said. "Playing this kind of football was more important than anything else to these men. What they were doing was no game."

As the trial played out over three months, it often seemed as if Padilla was an insignificant part of the cell. His voice was only picked up on seven of the FBI intercepts, he never talked in code and when others discussed him, it was always with vague reference such as travel to "the area of Osama."

But without Padilla, jurors would not have been able to link Hassoun and Jayyousi directly to al-Qaida through the 2000 camp application. And without the other two, Padilla could likely have been tried only for providing material support — himself_ to al-Qaida, which carries a 15-year maximum sentence instead of the life term possible for the murder conspiracy conviction.

In closing arguments, Frazier again reminded the jury that Padilla had gone to become an al-Qaida trainee, calling him "the star recruit of a terrorist support cell" based in South Florida.

Lawyers for the three have said they plan to appeal the convictions, at least in part based on claims that use of the bin Laden television interview was improper.

Jury convicts Padilla of aiding extremists and plotting attacks
Case had tested Bush's approach to terrorism

By Abby Goodnough and Scott Shane, New York Times News Service | August 17, 2007

MIAMI -- In a significant victory for the Bush administration, a federal jury found Jose Padilla guilty of terrorism conspiracy charges yesterday after little more than a day of deliberation.

Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who became one of the first Americans designated an "enemy combatant" in the anxious months after Sept. 11, 2001, now faces life in prison. He was released last year from a long and highly unusual military confinement to face criminal charges in federal court here.

The government's chief evidence was a faded application form that prosecutors said Padilla, 36, filled out to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

The jurors, seven men and five women from Miami-Dade County, would not speak publicly at the courthouse and left through a side entrance. But one juror, who asked that her name not be used, said later in a telephone interview that she had all but made up her mind before deliberations began.

"We had to be sure," the juror said in Spanish. "We wanted to make sure we went through all the evidence. But the evidence was strong, and we all agreed on that."

Padilla's extraordinary legal journey began in May 2002, when he was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla's capture a month later in a news conference in Moscow, saying that an "unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb" -- one that could have caused "mass death and injury" -- had been foiled.

After being held in isolation in a military brig in South Carolina for more than three years, Padilla was transferred to civilian custody here last year after the Supreme Court considered taking up his case. His lawyers tried in vain to have him found incompetent to stand trial, saying he had been tortured in the brig. The government denied that he was ever mistreated.

For the Bush administration, the guilty verdict salvaged a case that had severely tested its approach to terrorism. Padilla's military detention -- and his sudden transfer to the criminal courts in 2006 on different charges than those initially announced -- made his case the centerpiece of a heated debate over that approach.

"We commend the jury for its work in this trial and thank it for upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all," said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House. "Jose Padilla received a fair trial and a just verdict."

But some observers said the very success of the prosecution raised doubts about the administration's insistence that the terrorist threat cannot be handled in the civilian justice system.

"This demonstrates, at least for now, that the United States is fully capable of prosecuting terrorism while affording defendants the full procedural protections of the Constitution," said Michael Greenberger, who served in the Clinton administration Justice Department and teaches terrorism law at the University of Maryland law school.

Terror Ties Shock Ex-District Officials

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 18, 2007; B01

He was a well-dressed, soft-spoken man who was devoted to his large family and seemed knowledgeable about ways to repair Washington's broken down public schools.

Kifah W. Jayyousi's chief problem as a D.C. school official appeared to be a reckless determination to get the job done, those who knew him said. He lasted less than two years before he was booted out, but no one suspected that the mild-mannered naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan might be associated with terrorists.

On Thursday, a federal jury in Miami convicted the former chief of facilities for D.C. public schools of conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim overseas; conspiring to provide material support for terrorists; and providing that support.

He was convicted along with former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, whom the government has accused of plotting a radiological dirty bomb attack, and a Lebanese-born Palestinian, Adham Hassoun.

Prosecutors accused Jayyousi of participating in a support cell with Padilla. Jayyousi, they said, promoted jihad as a religious obligation through a newsletter called the Islam Report. The newsletter also delivered updates on mujaheddin fighters and solicited donations, prosecutors alleged.

As part of the murder conspiracy, according to prosecutors, Jayyousi helped arrange to send fighters to conflicts involving Muslims around the world.

In one transcript of a wiretapped call cited by prosecutors, Jayyousi asks a codefendant in the conspiracy to look for an "opportunity for us to come and visit . . . for Chechnya." Jayyousi was also portrayed via a wiretapped phone conversation as praising Osama bin Laden.

Yesterday, people who knew Jayyousi in Washington in the late 1990s and early 2000s said they never suspected him of terrorist, militant or extremist leanings.

"He's what a girl would call 'sweet,' " said Peggy Cooper Cafritz, former D.C. school board president.

"I was shocked," she said, recalling Jayyousi's arrest in March 2005. "I'm not often shocked by people in the school system. . . . I consider myself to be a pretty good observer of human character.

"He always seemed quite professional, in terms of suit and tie, the whole bit," she said. "I never saw or observed anything about an extremist or religious fervor seeping through in his conversation."

Former D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) told The Washington Post at the time of Jayyousi's arrest: "He played things close to the vest. But I could never fathom he'd have this kind of clandestine activity going on while he was managing the school facilities."

Former council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) said of Jayyousi yesterday: "He seemed one of the more competent people there."

Jayyousi, who is in his mid-40s and has five children, was hired from the Detroit school system in 1999 by former superintendent Arlene Ackerman to help fix the District's crumbling schools. In Detroit, he had overseen a $1.5 billion capital improvements program.

Even before Jayyousi came to Washington, he was under government surveillance, authorities have said.

Within two years of coming to the District, Jayyousi ran afoul of then-Superintendent Paul L. Vance for misusing school funds. He was dismissed on April 13, 2001.

"Implementation of several important systems has been left undone" by Jayyousi, Vance said at the time. "This deficit has led in some cases to putting the health and safety of our children at risk." Vance could not be reached yesterday.

Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, a District-based nonprofit organization that works to improve urban school facilities, said she sat in on an interview that school officials held with Jayyousi before he was hired. She said yesterday that she was concerned only about Jayyousi's ability to do the job.

"I was worried that he might be articulate yet not fully able to take on the problems that we had here, that he had had the same problems in Detroit and it didn't seem to me that he had successfully managed them," she said yesterday.

"The guy was certainly hard-working, very eager to please," she said. "He was pleasant enough to work with. . . . It's hard for me to wish any ill on the man. He just didn't seem like a bad guy to me."

Filardo said Jayyousi's demise in Washington came because, "he was trying to get it done. He was trying to get it done fast. It was exorbitantly expensive. He was using the limited tools at his disposal."

Staff writer Peter Whoriskey contributed to this report.