(Adds quotes, details) By Jane Sutton MIAMI, June 21 (Reuters) - Prosecutors can show most of a videotaped interview with Osama bin Laden to jurors in the terrorism trial of former "dirty bomber" suspect Jose Padilla, even though there is no evidence Padilla ever saw it, a judge ruled on Thursday. Prosecutors sought to play the CNN interview for the jury because they said Padilla's co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, discussed and praised it on wiretapped phone calls after it aired in May 1997. On the tape, made long before he became a household name for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden calls for the killing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. He blames the deaths of Palestinians on U.S. support for Israel and criticizes U.S. bombings in Iraq. Defense lawyers said the interview was irrelevant to the charges the defendants provided money and recruits for Islamist militants in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and other foreign nations. They said the tape would inflame and prejudice the jurors. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke ruled prosecutors could play most of the bin Laden interview that CNN aired. But she ruled jurors could not hear a portion that one of Padilla's lawyers, Anthony Natale, said "puts a shiver down your spine." In it, bin Laden is asked about his plans and replies, "You'll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing." The judge has cautioned jurors the defendants had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, which came more than four years after CNN interviewed bin Laden at a mountain hide-out in Afghanistan. Cooke said the defendants' suspected expression of support for bin Laden's remarks in 1997 might seem "malignant" after 2001. 'SCARY' Lawyers for Hassoun and Jayyousi disputed prosecutors' contention the two "celebrated" bin Laden's remarks. They said Jayyousi called him "scary" in one recorded conversation. Prosecutors acknowledged they had no evidence Padilla ever saw the bin Laden interview and the jury will be told that. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley said the tape and subsequent conversations would show the other defendants' support for violence against "un-Islamic regimes wherever they may be." The FBI arrested Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare airport in 2002 as a material witness in an investigation into Sept. 11, and the government said then he was plotting to set off a radiological "dirty bomb" in the United States. President George W. Bush sent Padilla, a U.S. citizen, to a military prison for 3 1/2 years as an "enemy combatant," but dropped the designation as the Supreme Court weighed a challenge to his authority to do that. Padilla was then added to the case against the other two defendants in Miami. His lawyers said they would ask for a mistrial if the bin Laden tape is played. The judge previously denied requests to try Padilla separately from the other two men. Hassoun is a Lebanese-born Palestinian computer programmer, and Jayyousi is a Jordanian-born U.S. citizen who served in the U.S. Navy aboard a nuclear submarine. All three face life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiring to "murder, kidnap and maim" people overseas and providing material support for terrorists.The defense contends Padilla went to the Middle East to study Arabic and become an Islamic cleric. They said the other two were involved in charities that provided innocent aid to Muslims in conflict zones but did not advocate violence.
