Free Republic

A jury on Friday convicted three men of Middle Eastern descent of plotting to recruit and train terrorists to kill American soldiers in Iraq. The men — Mohammad Amawi, 28, Marwan El-Hindi, 45, and Wassim Mazloum, 27 — face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors said the men were learning to shoot guns and make explosives while raising money to fund their plans to wage a holy war against U.S. troops. Defense attorneys charged that the three defendants, who all lived in the Toledo area, were manipulated by a government informant. The jury returned its verdict after three...

January 15, 2009 # Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-nsd-041.html Chicago Cousins Plead Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Terrorists WASHINGTON – Zubair Ahmed, 29, and Khaleel Ahmed, 28, both residents of Chicago, pleaded guilty today in the Northern District of Ohio to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists in connection with their efforts to travel abroad in order to murder or maim U.S. military forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today’s guilty pleas were announced by Matthew Olsen, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security; William J. Edwards, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of...

A congressional committee has included a local Islamic charity in a new round of inquiries into suspected ties between not-for-profit groups and terrorists. The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has requested the financial records of 25 Islamic charities, including the Columbia-based Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA. In particular, the request included donor lists that are reported to the IRS but protected under a privacy statute. The request comes two years after FBI, Department of the Treasury and other federal agency investigations into charities suspected of having ties to international terrorists. Since 2001, the United States has frozen more than $136...

  Kent man connected to al-Qaida, agent says 10/23/03Karen R. Long Plain Dealer Reporter York, Pa.- Using freshly declassified evidence, an Akron FBI agent testified yesterday that the bureau believes a Kent man is an al-Qaida operative as potentially lethal as the terrorists who flew the hijacked planes Sept. 11, 2001. Ashraf Al-Jailani, a Yemen- born geochemist arrested a year ago in Akron, sat mute as FBI Special Agent Roger Charnesky described him as an al-Qaida "first-stringer, highly educated, highly trained and highly motivated." Charnesky, his forehead glistening with perspiration, asserted that if Al-Jailani "is who the evidence suggests...