(Xinhua) -- A U.S. man was on Tuesday convicted by a federal jury in Boston, Massachusetts of conspiring to support al-Qaeda, conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and lying to federal agents.According to a report by The Boston Globe, the convicted, Tarek Mehanna, was from the Boston suburb of Sudbury. He was of Egyptian descent and had a doctorate degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The 29-year-old has been held without bail since he was indicted on terrorism charges in Nov. 2009.
Prosecutors alleged that Mehanna traveled to Yemen in 2004 seeking terrorism training, so he could carry attacks against US soldiers in Iraq. After failing to find training there, he returned to the United States, translating and distributing propaganda promoting the terror network's ideology on the internet.
Defense lawyers argued that Mehanna did not provide support to al-Qaeda, but expressing his own views in opposition to U.S. foreign policy, particularly to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But a series of Mehanna's former friends testified against him that he had promoted extreme ideology, endorsed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. FBI agents also told jurors that a search of Mehanna's computer uncovered countless documents promoting al- Qaeda, including materials that Mehanna had translated into English.