IT WAS a terrorist trial that seemed to have everything - including a CIA agent testifying in disguise and a mysterious reference to a female donkey. But the long-awaited court appearance of Jose Padilla, a US citizen once known as America’s “dirty bomber”, has turned out to be missing a crucial ingredient - evidence that he actually did anything wrong.

More than two months after federal prosecutors first stood up in a Miami courtroom and depicted Padilla as a would-be jihadist (holy warrior) who with two codefendants was conspiring to “murder, kidnap and maim”, the case has become a potential embarrassment to US security officials.

After weeks of testimony about alleged Al-Qaeda plots, travels to the Middle East and the defendants’ use of secret code words such as “going on a picnic”, the prosecution rested its case with only one piece of physical evidence allegedly linking Padilla to Al-Qaeda – a half filled-out training camp application form that was said to bear his fingerprints.

A defence application for the case to be dismissed for lack of evidence was rejected by Judge Marcia Cooke, who said it would be up to the 12 federal jurors to decide on the prosecution’s claims.

Yet Cooke had earlier told prosecutors that their original indictment was “very light on facts”, and the case has begun to attract international attention for the problems the US government has faced in presenting a terrorist prosecution in a civilian court. An acquittal for Padilla, a 36-year-old Muslim convert, would further complicate Wash-ington’s efforts to hold Al-Qaeda suspects without proper trials at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

When Padilla was arrested at Chicago airport as he arrived from Pakistan in May 2002, America was still reeling from the September 11 attacks. There was further shock when John Ashcroft, then the US attorney-general, announced that Padilla’s arrest had “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb”.

For the next three years, Padilla was confined to a US Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, while lawyers fought over President George W Bush’s decision to detain a US citizen indefinitely as an “enemy combatant”.

When it became clear last year that the US Supreme Court might rule against the administration, Padilla was moved to a civilian court. But there was a big surprise when the charges against him were finally unveiled – no reference to the supposed dirty bomb was included.

Instead, he was charged with providing material support for terrorism and being part of an unspecified conspiracy.

“The government’s central argument is that Padilla is a bad guy who hung out with other bad guys,” one legal analyst said on the first day of the trial last May.

Even that broad charge proved difficult to prove as the government presented 23 specialist witnesses, including a CIA covert agent who put on theatrical glasses and a fake beard for his appearance in court. The prosecution also played dozens of tapped phone calls in which the three defendants allegedly used code words to discuss their plans.

John Kavanaugh, an FBI agent who led the investigation, said that when the men talked of “playing football,” “going on a picnic” or smelling “fresh air”, it was code for going on a jihad. Kavanaugh said that “eating cheese” was another reference to waging war, but he admitted he had no idea what one of the accused meant when he referred to “a reservation on the female donkey”.

Yet of the 300,000 recordings made by the FBI, only seven were presented with Padilla’s voice and he never used a code-word.

His co-accused are Adham Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian computer programmer, and Kifah Jayyousi, a Detroit school administrator, both of whose names were found in his mobile phone when he was arrested.

The defence has also cast doubts on the supposed application form that Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam while in jail on a 1991 weapons conviction, allegedly filled out in July 2000 in the hope of attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

Anthony Natale, Padilla’s lead lawyer, has hinted that the document might have been handed to his client during his interrogation, just so the CIA could get his fingerprints on it.

The defence, which began rebutting the prosecution case last week, argues that the three men had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, and that Padilla’s travels to Egypt and Pakistan were for religious purposes.

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