Padilla found guilty

MIAMI -- Jose Padilla's jury gave the Bush administration the biggest victory it could have Thursday, convicting him and two defendants of supporting terrorism.

But some legal experts say it was a loss for the government's argument that it can't use civilian courts to prosecute hundreds of detainees suspected of being terrorists.

Padilla, a New York native raised in Chicago, and his foreign-born co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted Thursday by a federal jury of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. They were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts, each of which carries a maximum 15-year sentence.

The administration's preference has been to try terror suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before a military panel. It says it's difficult to try such cases in civilian court, where suspects have greater rights and secret and sensitive evidence can't be presented because the proceedings are public.

"This verdict once again demonstrates that federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases," said Neal Sonnett, a prominent Miami defense lawyer who chairs an American Bar Association task force on treatment of enemy combatants.

"It's going to be difficult for the government to continue the argument that we need military commissions in Guantanamo Bay because we don't have other options. Well, how did we convict Jose Padilla?" said Scott Silliman, law professor and director of the Duke University Center on Law, Ethics and National Security.

Padilla, held for 3½ years as an enemy combatant, was accused after his 2002 arrest of being part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the U.S. Those allegations were not part of his trial, where he was accused of being a recruit for a terror support cell who went to Afghanistan to attend an al-Qaida training camp.

He, Hassoun and Jayyousi were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.

The White House thanked the jury for a "just" verdict, and senior Bush administration officials said they were gratified by the jury's decision.

"The conviction of Jose Padilla -- an American who provided material support to terrorists and trained for violent jihad -- is a significant victory in our efforts to fight the threat posed by terrorists and their supporters," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a statement.

Instead of bomb-making materials or tape-recorded threats, the best physical evidence prosecutors could come up with against Padilla was a "mujahedeen data form" -- basically a bureaucratic al-Qaida registration document -- that he filled out for the camp.

It had seven of his fingerprints on it. His lawyers said he might not have touched it until after his arrest, but the connection to Osama bin Laden's terror organization may have been enough for jurors, who took just 11 hours to reach a verdict after a three-month trial.

"The short deliberation gives at least the impression that the jury basically had its mind made up and bought the government's depiction of Padilla hook, line and sinker," said Stephen I. Vladeck, an American University law professor who has closely followed the case.

There was no reaction from any of the defendants when the verdict was read. Padilla, wearing a dark suit and wire-rimmed glasses, stared straight ahead and leaned forward slightly. One person in the family section started to sob when the guilty verdicts were read.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke set a Dec. 5 sentencing date.

The charges brought in civilian court in Miami were a shadow of those initial dirty bomb claims in part because Padilla was interrogated in a military brig and was not read his Miranda rights.

Padilla's attorneys fought for years to get his case into federal court, and he was finally added to the Miami terrorism support indictment in late 2005 just as the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to consider Bush's authority to continue detaining him.

Padilla, a Muslim convert, had lived in South Florida in the 1990s and was supposedly recruited by Hassoun at a mosque to become a mujahedeen fighter.

Padilla's lawyers insisted "mujahedeen data form" was far from conclusive and denied he was a "star recruit" for a terrorist support cell, as prosecutors claimed. Padilla's attorneys said he traveled to Egypt in September 1998 to learn Islam more deeply and become fluent in Arabic.

"His intent was to study, not to murder," said Padilla attorney Michael Caruso.

Estela Lebron, Padilla's mother, said outside the courthouse: "The winner is George Bush." Earlier in the courtroom, she said she felt "a little bit sad" at the verdict but expected her son's lawyers would appeal.

"I don't know how they found Jose guilty. There was no evidence he was speaking in code," she said, referring to FBI wiretap intercepts in which Padilla was overheard talking to co-defendant Adham Amin Hassoun.

Attorneys for Hassoun and Jayyousi said they intended to appeal. There was no immediate comment from Padilla's lawyers.

"We're very disappointed," said Hassoun attorney Kenneth Swartz.

Members of the jury declined interview requests from the media and were escorted out of the courthouse through a side exit by U.S. marshals.

James Cohen, criminal law professor at Fordham University, said the form likely cinched the case for many jurors.

"The fingerprints on the application, combined with the claim that Padilla's purpose was humanitarian when various Muslim charities are accused of being mere fronts for terrorism, adds up to a difficult defense," Cohen said.

Central to the investigation were some 300,000 FBI wiretap intercepts collected from 1993 to 2001, mainly involving Hassoun, 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.

The bulk of these conversations and other evidence concerned efforts in the 1990s by Hassoun and Jayyousi, both 45, to assist Muslims in conflict zones such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Hassoun is a computer programmer of Palestinian descent who was born in Lebanon. Jayyousi is a civil engineer and public schools administrator who is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jordan. Jayyousi also ran an organization called American Worldwide Relief and published a newsletter called the Islam Report that provided details of battles and political issues in the Muslim world.

"It wasn't a terrorist operation. It was a relief operation," said Jayyousi attorney William Swor.