Instead, he will go on trial with his two co-defendants, "former school administrator and onetime San Diego resident Kifah Wael Jayyousi and computer programmer Adham Amin Hassoun."

The key document at trial is expected to be an application for jihad training. The Government is trying to link Muslim aid organizations with al-Qaeda groups.

he 44-year-old Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Jordanian birth, and 45-year-old Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, had been under surveillance since the mid-1990s, the indictment says. They were arrested around the same time as Padilla. The indictment alleges all three defendants were followers of Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian Muslim cleric known as "the blind sheikh" who was given a life sentence in 1995 for inciting terrorist acts, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

According to the charge sheet, Jayyousi sought help from North American Muslim groups through his newsletter, the Islam Report, in which he called it "a religious obligation" to aid Muslims under siege in foreign conflicts. The government describes Hassoun as East Coast representative of two humanitarian aid organizations that it alleges are fronts for the support of violent jihad.

Padilla, who converted to Islam during an unrelated previous incarceration, was recruited and sent abroad to train for the defense of Muslims under siege in Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, the government alleges.

Expect the Government to use a lot of code-word interpretation in trying to prove its case.

The government alleges the defendants used code for their activities, such as "fresh air" for action in a conflict area; "tourism" for travel and upkeep expenses while abroad; and "football" for armed combat and "the other team" for foreign forces perceived as oppressing Muslims.

The Southern District of Florida blog is a good place to go for trial updates.