[Ppnews] Tarek Mehanna found guilty on all seven counts

[Political Prisoner News]

U.S. man found guilty of aiding terrorism

By Lauren Keiper

BOSTON | Wed Dec 21, 2011 2:28am IST
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/12/20/security-usa-mehanna-idINDEE7BJ0C920111220

(Reuters) - A jury on

Tuesday found a Massachusetts man guilty of conspiring to support al 
Qaeda by translating Arabic messages and traveling to Yemen for 
terrorism training.

Tarek Mehanna, 29, was found guilty on all seven counts against him 
and faces the possibility of life in prison.

The U.S. citizen was arrested in 2009 and charged with "providing and 
conspiring to provide material support to terrorists." He was also 
charged with conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and lying to law 
enforcement officers.

Members of his defense team called themselves "extraordinarily 
disappointed" with the verdict and said they will appeal.

"The charges scare people. The charges scared us when we first saw 
them," defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr said outside the federal courthouse.

Prosecutors said the defendant answered a call to action from Osama 
bin Laden to battle U.S. soldiers.

They said he traveled to Yemen in 2004 to seek terrorism training, 
but never received it, and had planned to travel to Iraq to fight U.S. troops.

They also said he translated videos and texts from Arabic to English 
and distributed them online to further al Qaeda's cause.

Defense attorneys said Mehanna was merely trying to learn more about 
his Muslim heritage by studying Islamic law and translating classical 
texts. He traveled to Yemen to visit schools where he hoped to study, 
they said.

Carney said the jury was likely affected by the many references to 
the September 11, 2001, attacks and bin Laden, and he said 
prosecutors had been given extraordinary leeway to present 
"inflammatory, prejudicial evidence" at trial.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said after the verdict that the evidence 
had been relevant and supported the guilty verdicts.

"We do not prosecute people for expressing their beliefs," she said. 
"We prosecute people for conduct."

Sentencing was scheduled for April.

Mehanna openly opposed the U.S. military presence in Iraq and showed 
admiration for bin Laden's efforts to expel foreign powers from 
Muslim countries, defense attorneys said. He never worked for al 
Qaeda or had direct contact with the group.

Among the trial witnesses was one of Mehanna's friends, Daniel 
Maldonado, a New Hampshire man serving a 10-year sentence for 
obtaining al Qaeda military training.

The FBI released excerpts of blogs allegedly written by Mehanna about 
how martyrdom appealed to him, and transcripts of phone conversations 
between Mehanna and Maldonado.

Mehanna was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Sudbury, a suburb 
west of Boston, and holds a doctorate degree from the Massachusetts 
College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. (Additional reporting by 
Daniel Lovering; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Peter Bohan, Greg McCune 
and Xavier Briand)




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