Reuters : Verdict reached in Padilla terrorism support trial

Verdict reached in Padilla terrorism support trial

August 16, 2007

MIAMI (Reuters) - Jurors have reached a verdict in the terrorism support trial of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and two other men, a court official said on Thursday.

The verdict was to be read at a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), an aide to U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said.

Padilla and co-defendants 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 charges that Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. 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 sent him to an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan to train as a killer.

The Bush administration accused him after his 2002 arrest of plotting to set off a radioactive bomb. Bush ordered him imprisoned by the military as an "enemy combatant." 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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