Free Republic

The federal charges lodged this week against Mahmud F. Brent read like a thriller, filled with tales of a clandestine FBI sting operation in a Maryland hotel room, terrorism training camps in the mountains of Pakistan and shadowy connections to al-Qaida. .....According to court papers, Brent, a 30-year-old West Baltimore man who drove a cab in Washington, conspired to help the armed wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based religious organization labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. government. Brent, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in Orange, N.J., outside Newark on Thursday afternoon and brought to New York. About the same time,...

A Maryland man was charged with conspiracy to help a terrorist organization after he boasted that he went to Pakistan, attended terrorist training camps and agreed to provide whatever assistance was necessary, prosecutors said Thursday. Mahmud Faruq Brent, of Gwynn Oak, Md., was charged after a New York musician arrested on similar charges in May agreed to meet with him and let the FBI record the encounter, according to a joint release by federal prosecutors, the FBI and New York police. Brent was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan with conspiracy to provide material...