Free Republic

U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Al Qaeda Syed Hashmi, aka “Fahad,” pleaded guilty today in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda, announced Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Hashmi, 30, was arrested on June 6, 2006 at Heathrow Airport in London, shortly before he was to board a flight to Pakistan. He was later extradited to the United States; Hashmi is the first individual to be extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States on terrorism charges. According to the superseding indictment...

June 9, 2006 -- The Queens chapter of an international jihadist group - founded by the Brooklyn College grad accused of being an al Qaeda sympathizer - is terrorizing people in the extremist's old stomping grounds, residents said yesterday. "They have a lot of hatred [but] the police said they can't do anything about them," Kana Chauhan, president of the Jackson Heights Merchants Association, said of the radical group Al Muhajiroun. The organization is tied to suspected terrorist ally Syed "Fahad" Hashmi, a disciple of Syrian cleric Omar Bakri who was banned from speaking on English college campuses. The Queens-bred...

An American citizen who once lived and attended college in New York City was indicted today on charges of conspiring to send money and military gear to al Qaeda associates who lived in Pakistan, the United States attorney's office in Manhattan said. The defendant, Syed Hashmi, 26, was arrested in London's Heathrow Airport on Tuesday night, as he was trying to board a flight to Pakistan, prosecutors said. Law enforcement officials said the arrest of Mr. Hashmi reinforced their belief that New York was a nexus in a web of worldwide terrorist activity. Mr. Hashmi had an address in Flushing,...