It's a passing reference that could easily go unnoticed on the dozens of government wiretaps in the Miami trial of Jose Padilla.

It has nothing to do with terrorism or militant Islam or any of the crimes prosecutors hope to prove in court. It has to do with a tape -- a tape of a radio interview Padilla gave in the mid-1990s about his troubled youth and conversion to Islam. The 45-minute interview, obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, provides a first person account of the Broward man's life before he became a national symbol in the war on terror.

At the time, Padilla was an ex-convict, a newlywed and a recent Muslim convert. His journey would soon take him from South Florida to Cairo, Egypt, from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to a South Carolina Navy brig -- and ultimately to Miami where the 36-year-old U.S. citizen is on trial.

During the interview, Padilla describes a major turning point on that journey - his conversion to the Islamic faith.

"I was really, really on the wrong path," Padilla says of his brushes with the criminal justice system. "I know for sure now why I had to go through those things in life because now I'm a Muslim."

His conversion was sparked, he says, by two visions he had in Broward County Jail. In the first, he saw himself walking in the desert wearing Muslim garb and a turban. In the second, a woman led him down a long hall toward a door. A light so intense it made his flesh tremble shone from behind the door, Padilla says.

"I was going to go inside because it was beautiful and I really wanted to go," he says. Then a booming voice from behind the door told him "Not yet."

The voice of the man on the tape, introduced as Brother Ibrahim Padilla, (the Arabic name Padilla took after his conversion), sounds like the voice identified as Padilla's on government wiretaps.

Padilla was arrested at O'Hare Airport in May 2002. Then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his capture in a special broadcast, saying the government had thwarted an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on U.S. soil.

Labeled an "enemy combatant," Padilla was held without charges in a Charleston, S.C. brig for 3 1/2 years before he was added in 2005 to the Miami case.

The indictment charges him with being a member of a terror cell and traveling overseas to become an Islamic fighter. He is on trial with two other accused cell members, Adham Amin Hassoun, a Sunrise computer programmer of Palestinian descent, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a former school administrator in Detroit and Washington, D.C.

Prosecutors say Hassoun recruited Padilla and Jayyousi, raised funds and published propaganda for radical Islamic groups. Prosecutors and defense lawyers declined to comment on the interview.

Also participating in the radio show, a local program on Islamic issues which aired on 1580 AM, is Padilla's then-wife Cherie Stultz, who also converted to Islam. Stultz, referred to on tape by her Arabic name Marwa, could not be reached for comment.

The two met after Padilla and his mother moved to South Florida, they said. At the time, he was roughly 20 and had already spent three years in a juvenile detention center in connection with a deadly assault in Chicago.

On the tape, Padilla says he quickly returned to "hanging around with the wrong crowd." After firing a gun during a traffic dispute, he was charged with three felony counts and spent roughly 10 months in Broward County Jail.

While there, he was punished for fighting with 30 days in isolation. By his own account, it was an experience he found deeply depressing.

"To be honest with you, it really didn't matter to me whether I was dead or alive," Padilla says. "I had no goals. It was like I was dead mentally."

He began reading the Bible and resolved not to eat until God gave him a sign. While fasting, he experienced the two visions.

"It was something so real, like I was sleeping with my eyes open," he says, struggling to put the experience into words.
 Upon his release from jail, Padilla called Islamic organizations out of the Yellow Pages seeking a Koran, the holy text of Islam.

He also took a job at a Taco Bell in Davie. The manager, Mohammed Javed, who was Muslim, finally gave him a copy of the Koran, Padilla says. Javed could not be reached for comment. "I stuck to the book and just read and read and read," Padilla says. "I read it once and then I went back and read it twice."

Javed invited him to attend a South Florida mosque. When Padilla saw the clothing and the worshipers' turbans, he recalled his vision.

"I said 'yes' this is it," Padilla says. "This is what the Almighty wants me to be."

At the end of the interview, the host asks Padilla for his advice to non-Muslims.

"Don't believe all the propaganda that is being portrayed out there about Islam, about terrorism and extremists," Padilla replies.

In 1998, Padilla left South Florida for Egypt. He and Stultz divorced and Padilla married an Egyptian woman. The couple had two sons.

Defense lawyers say he went to the Middle East to study Islam and Arabic. Prosecutors contend Padilla left the United States, with Hassoun's encouragement, to become an Islamic fighter. Their case relies heavily on wiretapped phone calls.

On one, Hassoun brings up the radio interview.

"I put the tape in and I was going to Hollywood and I listened to it on my way going and coming back," Hassoun says on the 1997 wiretapped call. "It was good, man ... " Hassoun says. "I didn't know what you have been through."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-618padilla,0,7558737.story?coll=sfla-news-broward