[JURIST] US District Judge Marcia Cooke ruled Tuesday that prosecutors had produced enough evidence in the trial of Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive] and his co-defendants that the case should go to a jury, rejecting a motion for acquittal filed by the defense. The prosecution rested [JURIST report] last week, at which time the defense filed the motion based on the alleged insufficiency of the evidence against Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi [GlobalSecurity profiles]. Defense counsel is scheduled to begin presenting its case this week.

Padilla, Hassoun, and Jayyousi are charged [JURIST report] with being a part of an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist support network and conspiring to murder US nationals. Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and subsequently detained as an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] at a Navy military brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Initially accused of planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States, Padilla went from enemy combatant to criminal defendant when he was finally charged with other offenses in November 2005. AP has more.