You wanted a Trial

Well now you liberal freaks have GOT one.

After months of investigation, legal maneuvering and jury selection, federal prosecutors and attorneys for alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla finally get to present their cases in a trial expected to last into August.

Opening statements are scheduled Monday in the terrorism support trial of Padilla, a U.S. citizen, and two co-defendants.

"It is the single most important part of the trial in federal court," said Milton Hirsch, a prominent Miami defense lawyer not involved in the Padilla case. "If we expect people to understand days if not weeks of evidence, some of it obscure, we had better give them a conceptual basis in opening statements for doing so."

What a model citizen this guy was?
FORMER gang member? I would have to say he UPGRADED his gang affiliation to a global scale. Guess he was tired of the street crack money?

Padilla, 36, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert, has been in federal custody since his May 2002 arrest at O'Hare International Airport. He was initially accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States and was held for three-and-a-half years at a Navy brig as an enemy combatant, but those allegations are not part of the Miami case.

"The crimes he has been charged with pale in comparison to the initial allegations," said University of Miami law professor Stephen Vladeck. "This is a far cry from being a major front in the government's war on terrorism."

Instead, Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, both 45, are accused of being part of a North American support cell for Islamic extremists in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. All have pleaded not guilty and face possible life in prison if convicted.

In Padilla's case, a key piece of evidence is an application to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan that prosecutors say he completed in July 2000 and which bears his fingerprints.

Defense lawyers will seek to raise questions in jurors' minds about the authenticity of the form, whether Padilla actually completed it himself and if there might be an alternative explanation for the presence of the fingerprints.

Alternative reason? WHAT THE FUCK can that be?
That he accidentally made it to Afghanistan after he missed his flight to Puerto Rico and upon landing in Afghanistan or in this case Pakistan he made his way over to a Head Hunter agency that could help him find a job to pay for his ticket back home?

The most astonishing part is that Al-Qaueda has a pay package as well as a buyout plan. Make you REALLY wonder who exactly is supplying them with all this money? Bin Laden can't have that much money laying around.

At the very end of the form is a section labeled "Administrative Use." "Al Qaeda were great record keepers,'' said Cloonan. "When al Qaeda was conceived of there were articles of incorporation. It was a very top to bottom organization. There was an organizational chart. You had an employment contract. … You had the remnants of an insurance plan. You have a salary … as a single member of al Qaeda, you are paid $1,000 a month. As a married member, you get paid $1,500.

"And believe it or not if you choose to leave the group you had a buyout package. And that buyout package was $2,400 and airline tickets to wherever you wanted to go."

Cloonan said that "at one point, they … had something like human resources. They had a public relations arm … so when these safehouses were raided both in Pakistan and also in Afghanistan, what they came out with was a treasure trove of documents.''

Now we all need to wait and see what the Jury decides on this one.