#7 A Pakistan-born resident of the US state of Maryland was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for supporting a terrorist group blamed for an attack in Mumbai, India, that killed 180 people, justice officials said. Ali Asad Chandia, 29, who taught third-graders at an Islamic school in College Park, Maryland, was found guilty in June of providing material support and resources to Lashkar-e-Toiba.
At Friday's sentencing, he insisted he was not guilty of the charges.
Indian security agencies suspect that the group he supported, which is allegedly based in Pakistan, was behind the serial attacks on the train system in Mumbai last month.
Chandia was charged with giving "safe harbour" to a convicted British terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, who is currently serving a 9- year sentence in Britain for procuring military goods for Lashkar-e- Toiba, or Army of the Pure.
Khan apparently visited the United States in 2002 and 2003, where he used Chandia's computer to shop for unmanned aerial craft, night vision equipment and wireless video cameras, US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said in a statement.
The FBI found audiotapes and other materials "manifesting his commitment to violent jihad" during a search of his home in 2003, the statement said.
Other evidence included CD-ROMs found in his car that glorified the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US and showed still photographs of persons jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center towers.
"Terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Toiba rely on a network of individuals to carry out their deadly operations," Rosenberg said. "Ali Asad Chandia was a member of that network for Lashkar-e-Toiba, and he will now spend a very long period of time in prison for providing material support in furtherance of its violent agenda."
According to a sophisticated website dedicated to Chandia's support, the young man was born in Pakistan and moved with his family at age 17 to Maryland, outside Washington, the US capital.
His father, an attorney in Lahore, Pakistan, remained behind to practice law. In a letter to the US court in Virginia that sentenced his son, Noor Mohammed Khan Chandia said he had sent his children to the US "for the freedom that it provided ... and excellent education."
The website says Chandia was a star student at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
"Our family believes in friendship with India," the father wrote, according to the letter posted on the website. "I myself visited India twice in the year 2005 for vacations. If the government of India has any grievance against me or the family no visa could have been granted to me."
Prosecutors claimed Chandia had travelled to Pakistan in 2001-2002 to meet Khan. Chandia's website claims he attended his brother's wedding on that trip. |
A third-grade teacher at Al Huda School in North College Park [Maryland, just east of Washington DC and home to the U-MD Terrapins with lots of gullible college kidz] was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday for his participation in the ‘‘Virginia Jihad Network.” Ali Asad Chandia, 29, was the last of a group of 11 Muslim men charged in Alexandria, Va. U.S. District Courts for training with Lashkar-I-Taiba, a group fighting against the Indian government and labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, according to a Washington Post report.