Terrorism Suspect Portrayed as 'Slow'

The other evidence against the alleged cell consists of thousands of intercepted phone calls. Padilla's voice is heard on eight of them, and so far prosecutors have presented seven; the eighth is described as inconsequential.

In those calls, and in those in which his associates refer to him -- often as "Ibrahim" and "Abu Abdallah" -- Padilla comes across as a frustratingly evasive project for his associates.

"Is he speaking Arabic, or he hasn't learned anything yet?" Hassoun asks another man, Mohamed Youssef, who is in Egypt with Padilla.

At this point, Padilla has been in Egypt for five months, supposedly studying Islam and Arabic.

"No. He basically, uh basically, he is a slow learner. I mean he is a slow learner," Youssef responds.

"So during the time he spent there, did he learn anything?" Hassoun asks again.

"Basically, he doesn't speak, sheikh. Basically, he doesn't want to speak. I mean, the man doesn't -- doesn't move."

Elsewhere in the tapes, Hassoun seems frustrated by how little he hears from Padilla. "You guys were not supposed to interrupt your communication at all," he says at one point, and "I was, like, why Ibrahim is not calling?" His mother, too, wants to hear from him, Hassoun indicates in the calls.

For his part, Padilla, who finds work teaching English and working at a "weight-lifting place," asks Hassoun somewhat sheepishly for money. He also discusses the difficulty of living in Egypt, even more than a year after he arrives.

After Hassoun tells him "Egypt is wonderful" in one call, Padilla responds: "But sometimes it's very, you know, it's difficult to get used to the culture. The Egyptian people are very tough, you know. I get frustrated sometimes."

Youssef tells Hassoun in an earlier call that Padilla "started, of course, to get psychologically tired, because he was living alone."

After April 2000, however, there are no more calls presented on which Padilla's voice appears.

According to the date on the mujaheddin data form, it was in July 2000 that Padilla reached the al-Qaeda training camp.

What Padilla does after the last call he is heard on in the spring of 2000 has been outlined only partially through the wiretapped conversations of others.

In the fall of 2000, for example, Hassoun was again looking for Padilla, because, among other things, he was supposed to sign divorce papers, according to one of the tapes played so far. He gets a somewhat vague answer, one that prosecutors say suggest he is in Afghanistan.

"Ibrahim is a little farther south. . . . He is supposed to be at Osama's," Youssef said.