Jose Padilla sentenced on terrorism charges

Attorneys for Hassoun and Jayyousi were also gratified but repeated that they will appeal their convictions and sentences, as will Padilla.

“It is definitely a defeat for the government,” said Hassoun lawyer Jeanne Baker.

“The government has not made America any safer. It has just made America less free,” said William Swor, who represents Jayyousi.

The Justice Department praised prosecutors and investigators in the long-running case.

“Thanks to their efforts, the defendants’ North American support cell has been dismantled and can no longer send money and jihadist recruits to conflicts overseas,” Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.

The men were convicted after a three-month trial based on tens of thousands of FBI telephone intercepts collected over an eight-year investigation and a form Padilla filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, converted to Islam in prison and was recruited by Hassoun while attending a mosque in suburban Sunrise.

Padilla sought a sentence of no more than 10 years. Hassoun asked for 15 years or less and Jayyousi for no more than five years.

Prosecutors invoked Osama links
Padilla’s arrest was initially portrayed by the Bush administration as an important victory in the months immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and later was seen as a symbol of the administration’s zeal to prevent homegrown terrorism. Prosecutors repeatedly invoked al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden in the criminal case.

Civil liberties groups and Padilla’s lawyers called his detention unconstitutional for someone born in this country and contended that he was only charged criminally because the Supreme Court appeared poised to order him either charged or released.

Jurors in the criminal case never heard Padilla’s full history, which according to U.S. officials included a graduation from the al-Qaida terror camp, a plot to detonate the “dirty bomb” and a plot to fill apartments with natural gas and blow them up. Much of what Padilla supposedly told interrogators during his long detention as an enemy combatant could not be used in court because he had no access to a lawyer and was not read his constitutional rights.

Padilla’s lawyers argued for a lenient sentence, in part because of his minor role in the conspiracy that was the subject of last year’s trial and because of claims that he was mistreated and tortured while he was held at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. U.S. officials denied those claims repeatedly.

Attorneys for Hassoun and Jayyousi argued that any assistance they provided overseas was for peaceful purposes and to help persecuted Muslims in violent countries. But FBI agents testified that their charitable work was a cover for violent jihad, which they frequently discussed in code using words such as “tourism” and “football.”

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