HAMMOND | Anthony Cimasko was shocked when he learned the United States Secret Service wanted to talk to him about his computer use.

Why, the agents asked, had the doctoral candidate penned online screeds urging President Bush's assassination? Why had he typed offensive messages about mutilating national leaders in reaction to the Iraq War?

Cimasko did not write the Internet postings, and eventually he learned another doctoral student in his Purdue University apartment complex in West Lafayette had hijacked his identity and used it to post them, according to testimony Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Hammond.

The other student, Vikram Buddhi, is on trial this week on 11 counts of threatening the lives of national leaders and their families and urging the destruction of American infrastructure.

In court Tuesday, Cimasko said he would not know Buddhi if the two of them were in the same room, as in fact they were at that moment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson says Buddhi used Cimasko's online identity to make the threats because it's clearly illegal to post such messages in public.

Buddhi's lawyer, John Martin, said his client never intended to carry out the threats himself and never believed that someone else would. And the Secret Service agreed, he said.

Shortly after Buddhi admitted to writing the messages in a Jan. 18, 2006, interview, Special Agent Wade Gault wrote in an internal report that Buddhi "does not appear to present a threat to Secret Service protectees at this time."

Buddhi was admonished not to post "things like that" and released without any travel restrictions or monitoring. The Secret Service did not interview any of Buddhi's professors or fellow students, Gault said.

Yet three months later, on April 13, Buddhi was arrested and had search warrants executed on his apartment. In recent e-mails to prosecution witnesses, Gault wrote, "This case is very important and it could lay a new foundation of what is free speech and what is not."

Buddhi has argued his comments are political protest and protected by the First Amendment.

Gault said the law is clear that such threats against the president's life are illegal.

"Those are statements that as far as I know have always been prosecuted by the Secret Service," Gault said in court Tuesday. "If it was determined by this court that you could say those words and not be prosecuted, that would be something new."

At issue are five messages Buddhi posted to Yahoo! financial message boards in December 2005 and January 2006, three of which bore the headline, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush."

Gault said the long delay in arresting Buddhi came because Yahoo was slow in responding to subpoenas, and because Purdue computer experts had to take time to unravel Buddhi's method of disguising his identity.

The trial resumes today.