U.S. terrorism trial ponders meaning of "eggplant"

MIAMI (Reuters) - Since the start of accused American "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla's trial in May, onlookers have heard about conspiracies to maim and kill, but also picnics, eggplants and lazy Miami postal workers.

Prosecutors say some of those seemingly innocuous terms are actually code words for violent "jihad," or "holy war," and acts of terrorism.

Much of the trial of Padilla, a former Chicago street gang member held for 3-1/2 years in a U.S. military jail as an "enemy combatant" before being transferred into the criminal justice system, and of two co-defendants, has been taken up with transcripts of scores of secretly recorded phone calls.

The defendants, charged with supporting violent Islamist groups overseas, knew their phones were monitored and U.S. government witnesses said their seemingly innocent conversations were laced with coded messages and double-speak.

"Tourism" was their euphemism for "jihad," the FBI's lead agent, John Kavanaugh, testified. "Smelling fresh air" also referred to waging jihad, Kavanaugh said.

When defendant Adham Hassoun told an alleged recruit, "The warehouse will open up very soon and they will request workers," he was discussing "an opportunity to participate in some upcoming jihad," the agent said.

He said Hassoun was also discussing jihad when he asked an acquaintance, "Is there a school over there to teach football?" and told another, "I need to confirm with you some final details before we go on the picnic."

"Cheese" meant money and "iron" was code for "weapons," Kavanaugh testified.

In a 1997 discussion on sending doctors and nurses to treat refugees in a war zone, Hassoun proposed sending "Dr. Ibrahim Padilla" and said, "He is a good surgeon, we'll see if he has free time to go help."

What that referred to, according to Kavanaugh, was sending Padilla to Afghanistan, where he allegedly attended an al Qaeda training camp.

TOUR MEANS TOUR?

Under cross-examination by defense lawyers, Kavanaugh acknowledged that when Hassoun and co-defendant Kifah Jayyousi discussed a tour of U.S. mosques, they meant exactly that.

Jayyousi's lawyer, William Swor, replied in mock astonishment, "Sometimes 'tour' means 'tour?'"

Other conversations may have been just as innocent, such as one in which defendants discussed the failings of the postal system and complained that Miami postal workers were too lazy to deliver their letters.

An international terrorism expert who testified for the government, Rohan Gunaratna, said al Qaeda groups and their affiliates around the world used similar code words.

Sports terms such as "football" and "soccer" refer to fighting, while the names of fruits and vegetables substituted for weapons of similar shapes, said Gunaratna, who interpreted "eggplant" as an RPG, or rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

To "get married" is to be killed, said Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

"It means paradise," he said. "It can mean, in Islamic terms, a martyrdom operation."

Prosecutors plan to introduce into evidence during the trial, which is expected to last through August, 123 conversations culled from more than 300,000 the FBI recorded between 1993 and 2001. Most were in Arabic.

Padilla, arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002 and initially accused by the government of plotting to set off a radiological "dirty bomb," is heard on only eight of the tapes.

He never mentioned "tourism" or used the other code words, Kavanaugh said.

But Padilla is heard on one tape complaining that an alleged co-conspirator talks too much and is quoted as saying, "Certain things shouldn't be discussed on the phone."