Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent

WASHINGTON, 6 March 2004 — A federal judge convicted three members of an alleged “Virginia jihad network” on Thursday. The trial is viewed as a major precedent for subsequent anti-terror criminal cases, and as a major victory for the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism.

The three men: Masoud Khan, 32, Seifullah Chapman, 31, and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, all reside in Virginia. They face a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the convictions are a “stark reminder that terrorist organizations are active in the Untied States...We will not stand by as a United States citizens support terrorist causes.”

Ashcroft also announced a new indictment in Idaho charging Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a graduate student from Saudi Arabia, with aiding Hamas, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization.

The federal prosecutors portrayed the men, two American-born converts and one a Pakistani immigrant, as Muslim extremists preparing for an overseas jihad by playing paintball and firing weapons in the Virginia countryside, and training at a camp for mujahideen fighters in Pakistan with idea of eventually helping the Taleban and terrorists groups abroad.

Relatives and friends, who filled the two courtrooms, criticized the verdicts saying that they resulted from an anti-Muslim prejudice arising from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Shaker Elsayed, secretary-general of the Muslim American Council, said the verdicts were an example of “US Justice Department rule by paranoia.” “It is evident that Muslims should not expect justice,” said Elsayed. “Muslims are besieged after 9/11, for no fault of their own.”

Eleven men, all Muslims, were indicted in June. Six subsequently pleaded guilty and five testified against the three who were convicted Thursday. Halfway though the trial, Federal Judge Leonie M. Brinkema dismissed charges against Caliph Basha Abdur-Raheem, also of Virginia, another faces trial next week. In the 75-page ruling, Judge Brinkema imposed the conviction after a 15-day trial in which the defendants chose not to be judged by a jury.

Judge Brinkema agreed with the prosecution’s arguments, calling the defendants’ denials “incredible.”

Although she found each of the defendants not guilty on several of the indictment’s numerous counts, she found them guilty on the more serious charges.

She said the defendants’ claims of innocence amounted to a “blind and deliberate ignorance” of the law, adding she found the case difficult because the defendants appeared to be good husbands and fathers.

Judge Brinkema ordered Chapman and Abdur-Raheem, who had been free on bail, to be held at the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., until they are sentenced in June. Khan is already being held at the center. All three men had rejected plea agreements that would have given them shorter sentences, their lawyers said. Abdur-Raheem’s attorneys said prosecutors urged him to agree to a plea bargain — a guilty plea with a two-year imprisonment sentence. He now faces a possible 15 years or more.