Padilla guilty in US terror trialUS citizen Jose Padilla has been found guilty of plotting to kill people overseas and supporting terrorism.
His two co-defendants, Lebanese-born Palestinian Adham Amin Hassoun and Jordanian-born Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted on the same counts.
Padilla convicted of terrorism supportPadilla, 36, and his foreign-born co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, which carries a penalty of life in prison. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts, which carry potential 15-year sentences each.
Padilla Is Convicted in Terrorism CaseJose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges
On Feb. 28, 2007, U.S. Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami ruled that suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was mentally competent, paving the way for his long-delayed case to proceed to trial.
Jose Padilla along with Lebanese-born Palestinian Adham Amin Hassoun and Jordanian-born Kifah Wael Jayyousi were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas as well as two terrorism material support counts.
The three were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists.
The key piece of physical evidence was a five-page form Padilla supposedly filled out in July 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, which would link the other two defendants as well to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.
The form, recovered by the CIA in 2001 in Afghanistan, contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints and several other personal identifiers, such as his birthdate and his ability to speak Spanish, English and Arabic.
"He provided himself to al-Qaida for training to learn to murder, kidnap and maim," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier in closing arguments.
Central to the investigation were some 300,000 FBI wiretap intercepts collected from 1993 to 2001, mainly involving Padilla's co-defendants Hassoun and Jayyousi and others. Most of the conversations were in Arabic and purportedly used code such as "tourism" and "football" for violent jihad or "zucchini" and "eggplant" instead of military weapons or ammunition.
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