That's the prosecution theme in the Jose Padilla trial.
It started in opening. And it
continued yesterday with the government calling
al Qaeda expert
Rohan Gunaratna. This is all leading up to the government playing a CNN interview with
Osama bin Laden, which Judge Cooke already has said portions can be played.
So can this evidence link any of the defendants to any
al Qaeda attacks?
According to Jay Weaver:
None of the evidence presented in the Miami trial links the three men to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or any other alleged al Qaeda attacks during the previous decade. It's not even clear to me why this expert or the CNN tape is relevant to the charges in this trial. The CNN tape is relevant, the government says, because two of
the defendants (not Padilla) watched it and discussed it.
Hmmmm. Think about that for a second. You better start thinking about the shows you watch or the websites you visit.
As for Padilla's argument that he only was captured on tape a couple of times,
here's Curt Anderson describing the re-
direct of the government's case agent:
On Monday, he also said Padilla likely spoke with Hassoun on many more occasions than the seven substantive telephone intercepts on which his voice appears. They met at a mosque in Florida, Kavanaugh said, and also used letters and human couriers to communicate.Huh? "Likely"? What does that mean? Where's the actual proof? Isn't that what the tapes are for? They recorded hundreds of thousands of calls, but they "likely" spoke on other
occassions not captured?
But they loved
Osama.
For me, the real controversy is how to spell
al Qaeda (Miami Herald spelling). Or is it
al Qaida (AP spelling). Blogger doesn't like either spelling.
