MIAMI — Defense attorneys for terror suspect Adham Hassoun yesterday called on an FBI agent who had previously testified for the prosecution in the hopes of debunking government claims that the defendant and others spoke in code about sending arms and other supplies to jihadists abroad.
Hassoun lawyer Jeanne Baker asked Special Agent John Kavanaugh to interpret remarks heard on thousands of hours of FBI wiretapped conversations involving Mr. Hassoun and his co-defendants Kifah Jayyousi and Jose Padilla. All three men are accused of providing money, equipment and material support to Muslim terror groups in such places as Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya as part of a purported “South Florida Support Cell.”
Phrases such as “you look like a plucker,” uttered by Mr. Hassoun during a 1996 conversation could be considered mere joking by the terror suspect, Mr. Kavanaugh said.
The FBI secretly recorded more than 300,000 conversations involving the defendants — though only seven include Mr. Padilla, initially arrested on suspicion of conspiring to explode a radioactive “dirty bomb” — during nearly a decade of surveillance.
The defendants also discussed providing Muslims abroad with animals meant for “slaughter,” which according to Mr. Kavanaugh, was a reference to the tradition of killing a lamb or calf for the feast celebrating the end of Ramadan.
In another conversation recorded by the FBI, Mr. Hassoun is heard making derogatory remarks about the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, referring to it as “part of the devil.”
Mr. Kavanaugh, however, noted that Mr. Hassoun’s supposed disdain for Hezbollah — a Shi’ite group — was rooted in inter-Islam sectarian differences, as Mr. Hassoun and his fellow defendants are Sunnis.
“There is a lot of animosity between Sunni and the Shia,” Mr. Kavanaugh said.
In his testimony last month on behalf of the prosecution, Mr. Kavanaugh interpreted for government lawyers several supposed references to violent jihad. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier had asked Mr. Kavanaugh to interpret “code phrases” used by Mr. Hassoun and Mahommed Youssef, a terror suspect currently in Egyptian custody, about the fighting in Chechnya that raged during the beginning of the decade.
“Everyone is closing up the store at 9/15,” Mr. Hassoun was heard saying in a conversation with Mr. Youssef, who at the time was supposedly en route to Chechnya. Mr. Kavanaugh interpreted the remarks as the window for Muslims wanting to join the war in Chechnya was closing.
Defense attorneys’ attempts yesterday to challenge the prosecution’s interpretation of the recorded conversations were repeatedly challenged by prosecutors who criticized Mr. Baker and Mr. Jayyousi’s attorney William Swor for asking the FBI agent the same questions they did more than a month ago.
“Today has been, in the government’s opinion a total waste of time,” government prosecutor Russell Killinger told District Court Judge Marcia Cooke.
Judge Cooke, who already had scolded Mr. Hassoun’s attorneys for poor preparation on new evidence they wished to submit, conceded that Mr. Kavanaugh’s day on the stand was “an ineffective use of time.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.