ALEXANDRIA, Va., 27 April 2005 — A prominent Islamic scholar was convicted yesterday of 10 counts alleging he encouraged followers in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks to join the Taleban and fight US troops.
Jurors reached their verdict in their seventh day of deliberations in the trial of Ali Al-Timimi.
The 41-year-old defendant showed no reaction to the verdict. He faces a mandatory maximum sentence of life in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors have said Timimi was a respected scholar who enjoyed “rock star” status among his followers and that he used that influence to guide them into holy war against the United States.
Many of the followers often got together to play paintball combat in the Virginia woods. Prosecutors said it was not a game, as the men contended, but practice for their planned holy war.
Timimi’s lawyers have said he only counseled young Muslims after Sept. 11 that they might be wise to leave the United States because it would become difficult to practice their faith in this country.
He had been free on $75,000 bail, and US District Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed him to remain free, with electronic monitoring, until his sentencing in July.
The foundation of the government’s case was a Sept. 16, 2001, meeting in which Timimi offered an apocalyptic interpretation of the Sept. 11 attacks, which he said heralded the final battle between Muslims and nonbelievers. He said Muslims were obligated to defend Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban regime, prosecutors said.
Three people who attended that meeting later went to Pakistan and received military training from a group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, with the aim of using that training on the Taliban’s behalf.
No one from the group ever made it to Afghanistan, but at least two group members have admitted their goal was to join the Taleban and that Timimi inspired them to do so.
