Al Qaeda is specter shading Padilla’s trial

In opening arguments Monday in the terrorism conspiracy trial of Jose Padilla and two codefendants, a federal prosecutor mentioned Al Qaeda 91 times in little more than an hour in what defense attorneys cast as a scare tactic to link their clients to extremist Islam.

“We will prove that Jose Padilla became an Al Qaeda trainee who provided the ultimate support -- himself,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Brian Frazier said in his opening statement. He said the defendants were “members of a secret organization, a terrorism support cell, based right here in South Florida.”

Defense lawyers countered that the government’s equation of this case with murderous attacks waged by Al Qaeda was a deliberate misrepresentation inspired by the absence of any evidence against Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun or Kifah Wael Jayyousi.

“Throughout our history there have been times of crisis, times when fear runs high, when political convenience causes parts of our government to overreach” and abrogate civil and constitutional rights, said Padilla’s lead public defender, Anthony J. Natale. “Now is one of those times of crisis, and this is one of those cases.”

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in May 2002. At the time, the Bush administration portrayed his capture as a post-Sept. 11 domestic security coup that averted a plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in an unnamed U.S. city.

In his trial, Padilla, 36, is accused of conspiracy to kill, kidnap or maim people abroad and of material support to terrorists. There is nothing in the charges related to planned attacks inside the U.S.

Frazier said the evidence would show that Padilla volunteered for an Al Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan to train for fighting in places like Somalia, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Hassoun, a Lebanese-born computer programmer, was at the core of a South Florida terrorism support cell and had incited sympathizers to take up arms for extremist Islam, Frazier said.

The prosecution portrayed Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen with a doctorate in engineering, as the organizer of arms and training for recruits lured by Hassoun.

Defense attorneys said in opening statements that the defendants were merely coming to the aid of besieged Muslims for humanitarian reasons, that the government was distorting the facts and that the government lacked evidence the three advocated anything violent or hostile.

“The government is really trying to put Al Qaeda on trial in this case. It has nothing to do with this case. He had nothing to do with Al Qaeda,” Jeanne Baker, an attorney for Hassoun, said while pointing at her client. “There’s a lot of rhetoric, but there’s no evidence.”

Natale pointed out that the government had not brought charges against Padilla for almost four years after his arrest, and he said that only seven of 300,000 phone calls wiretapped by the FBI over an eight-year investigation involved Padilla. Those calls, Natale said, back the Muslim convert’s assertion that he moved to Egypt in 1998 to further his religious education and learn Arabic.

Natale also said jurors should be skeptical of a key piece of prosecution evidence: an alleged Al Qaeda training questionnaire on which dozens of fingerprints were found in addition to Padilla’s.

An undercover CIA agent is expected to testify today -- in disguise -- about how the government obtained the so-called mujahedin data form.

Kenneth Swartz, another Hassoun lawyer, said his client and Jayyousi began exhorting fellow Muslims in the United States to get involved in helping oppressed Muslims abroad at a time when the U.S. government also considered them to be victims.

Swartz and Baker alluded to a State Department report from the mid-1990s that characterized the Russian army assault on separatist Muslims in Chechnya as a brutal invasion that killed tens of thousands. They also noted that NATO and U.S. forces came to the defense of Bosnian Muslims after Serbian nationalists massacred at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.

The defense attorneys said prosecutors were attempting to equate Al Qaeda terrorist cells with the religious fighters -- mujahedin -- who came to the defense of Muslims in the turbulent years after communism fell in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke has cautioned both sides against raising the original dirty-bomb accusations or mentioning the government’s detention of Padilla for 3 1/2 years designated as an “enemy combatant” at a military brig in Charleston, S.C.

The Pentagon transferred Padilla to the federal court system in November 2005, when the Supreme Court had been considering a review of his status and indefinite detention.

carol.williams@latimes.com