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March 29, 2006
US: Falls Church Islamist Gets Thirty Years' Jail Sentence
We reported on November 22 last year that a jury found Ahmed Omar Abu Ali (pictured) a guilty verdict, on charges that he joined a terrorist organisation (al-Qaeda) and had plotted to assassinate President George W. Bush.
Today, Associated Press, via Katu.com announces that earlier today, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee handed down a sentence of thirty years' imprisonment on Ali. He said that his deeds did not lead to anyone being killed, but stated that the sentence was sufficient punishment.
Houston-born Omar Abu Ali, a US citizen, had been arrested by Saudis in 2003. He had argued in his defense that he had been tortured into making a confession of al-Qaida involvement, by agents of Mubahith, the Saudi security force.
Ali had been brought up in Falls Church, Virginia, by Jordanian parents, who had indoctrinated him in extreme Islam by ensuring he attended a Salafist mosque. When their home had been raided, writings of an extreme radical nature were discovered.
His parents had sent him to a Wahhabi school, where only a narrow and fundamental strain of Islam is preached. He was at the Islamic University of Medina, in his final year, when he had been arrested.
He told Saudi authorities of the terror plot against Mr Bush, and also of his intention to set up an al-Qaeda cell in the United States.
Judge Lee saw similarities in Ali's case to that of John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan and became known as the "American Taliban". Lindh received a jail sentence of 20 years.
Prosecutor David Laufman said: "The facts in this case are still astonishing. Barely a year after September 11 the defendant joined the organization responsible for 3,000 deaths."
The Counterterrorism Blog gives intriguing details of Ali's involvement with a co-conspirator, probably Zubayr al-Rimi, who was killed in a shoot-out with Saudi security forces in September 2003.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 29, 2006 7:05 PM
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