Testimony ends in Padilla's terrorism trial

[CGowen]

Source: Reuters

MIAMI (Reuters) - Testimony ended on Tuesday in the trial of former "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla and two other men on charges of supporting terrorism, but Padilla's lawyers did not call a single witness.

...

Neither Padilla nor the other defendants, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, testified in the case, which is expected to go to the jury next week.

...

The government's evidence focused on secretly recorded telephone conversations, mostly involving Hassoun and Jayyousi. Most were in Arabic and prosecution witnesses said they contained coded references to jihadist activity.

Padilla is heard on only seven calls played for the jury. He did not use any coded language on the calls, the FBI's lead investigator testified, and mostly discussed issues such as the sale of a car he had left in Florida and divorce proceedings with his ex-wife.

The government's chief evidence against Padilla is a form he purportedly filled out under an alias in 2000 to attend an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla's fingerprints were on the outside pages but the government did not present any evidence actually placing him in Afghanistan.

....

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN8643629720070807?pageNumber=1

[EnricoFermi]

1. I know one thing

My calls to my friend in India will probably be seen as "coded messages" too, once this FISA thing takes full effect.

After all, talking about football, HAS to mean a nuclear football, and plans for Christmas must mean an attack is planned this winter.

When these paranoid bastards start listening in, they'll hear anything they want.

[Scurrilous]

2. Witness for Padilla presents strong testimony (Thu, Aug. 02, 2007)

<snip>

"With the end of the trial near, a defense team in the Jose Padilla terror case put on its strongest witness Thursday, when he testified that a suspected front for terrorists was actually a legitimate Islamic relief group.

Erol Bulur testified that he used his New Jersey warehouse to store tens of thousands of pounds of used clothes, canned foods and medicine donated by American Worldwide Relief, an organization run by a defendant in the Padilla trial.

Bulur said in Miami federal court that the relief group's efforts accounted for as much as two-thirds of all the supplies that he shipped from his warehouse through Turkey to Chechnya's embattled Muslims in 1995 and 1996.

''A lot more than two or three boxes were sent by American Worldwide Relief,'' said the Turkish-born Bulur, rebutting a prosecutor's attempt to downplay the group's significant humanitarian role in the Chechen conflict. Indeed, jurors were shown video of Bulur's warehouse and 40-foot cargo containers.

His testimony was powerful because it called into question a central theme in the U.S. government's case: that defendant Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a leader of American Worldwide Relief, used the group as a front to provide money, equipment and other supplies to Islamic terrorists overseas."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/191037.html

[MasonJar]

3. Let him go; he is innocent. It sounds like the others are too.