A US man was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison Thursday for conspiring to help al-Qaeda, in a case his defense had argued was a free speech issue.
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Tarek Mehanna,
| ...a young gentleman of Egyptian descent who received a doctorate in 2008 from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston, then taught math and religion at a Muslim school in Worcester. But before that he and a friend or two roamed the jihadi world failing to be accepted as apprentices in the craft in Yemen and Pakistan... |
who grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb, was found guilty in December of traveling to Yemen to seek training in a terrorist camp with the intention of going on to Iraq to fight US soldiers there. Prosecutors said that when that plan failed, Mehanna returned to the United States and began translating and disseminating materials online promoting violent jihad. |