Padilla case built on fear of Islam, lawyer says

MIAMI, Aug 15 (Reuters) A lawyer for one of former ''enemy combatant'' Jose Padilla's co-defendants portrayed the government's case in the terrorism support trial as ''US versus Islam'' and said it relied on fear of Muslims to cover a lack of evidence.

''That kind of fear and prejudice is what you have sworn your most sacred oath to put aside,'' defense attorney William Swor told the jury that is expected to begin deliberations later.

Padilla, a US citizen who was held without charge in a military prison for 3 1/2 years by order of President George W Bush before being charged in the case, is the best known among the three defendants.

He and the other two, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, face life in prison if convicted of providing material support for Islamist terrorist groups and conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

The government charged that Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a naturalized US citizen from Jordan, formed a support cell that recruited and financed fighters bent on establishing Islamist governments that would follow strict Sharia law.

Prosecutors said Hassoun recruited Padilla at a Florida mosque and arranged for him to go to an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, which defense lawyers denied.

Jayyousi, a US Navy veteran, never met Padilla until they ended up in the Miami courtroom, Swor said in closing arguments.

Jayyousi was a passionate and outspoken advocate for Muslims and ran a legitimate charity that provided food, medicine and clothing to those driven out of their homes and under siege in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere during the 1990s, Swor said.

Prosecutors said the defendants were al Qaeda affiliates and Assistant US Attorney Brian Frazier mentioned the terrorist group 100 times during his closing statement.

Defense lawyers denied the men had any link to the group and accused the government of playing to jurors' fears in a post-9/11 world.

Swor said the government showed the jury shadowy photos of the defendants, carefully selecting one of Padilla in a traditional Arab headdress, and played up Jayyousi's support for Islamic governments because, ''They know that the facts of the case do not establish a crime.'' He said the government's case was ''snake oil'' built on snippets of wiretapped conversations, questionably translated from Arabic and taken out of context by government witnesses who never examined 99.8 per cent of the recordings.

The government introduced into evidence about 125 transcripts from more than 300,000 conversations over nearly a decade, Swor said.

Padilla's lawyers, who did not call any witnesses during the 3-month trial, contend he went to Egypt to learn Arabic and study Islam.

There was no direct evidence he ever went to Afghanistan. The key evidence against him is what prosecutors said was an al Qaeda application form found in Afghanistan and bearing Padilla's fingerprints, birthdate and resume.

Padilla's lawyers were expected to argue in their closing argument that his fingerprints ended up on the form when investigators handed it to him to examine after his arrest.

Padilla, 36, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in May 2002 upon returning from Egypt and was accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a radioactive bomb.

Bush declared him an ''enemy combatant'' and ordered him imprisoned by the military. Amid court challenges to the president's authority to do that, Padilla was indicted in a civilian court in November 2005 on charges that do not mention any bomb plot.

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