Atlanta homegrown, wannabe terrorists to be sentenced Monday

By Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Federal prosecutors are seeking hefty prison terms against two Atlanta-area men who were convicted as homegrown, wannabe terrorists.

Syed Haris Ahmed, a former Georgia Tech student, and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, of Roswell, were convicted in separate and extraordinary trials earlier this year. They are set to be sentenced Monday.

In June, Ahmed, 24, waived a jury trial and gave his own closing argument to U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey. Delivering what he said was the message of Islam, he quoted from the Quran in Arabic. He is expected to represent himself at sentencing.

In August,  Sadequee, 23, represented himself at a jury trial and cross-examined his close friend Ahmed, who testified for the prosecution. Sadequee is expected to give a comprehensive statement at sentencing.

In court filings, prosecutors are asking Duffey to sentence Ahmed to 15 years in prison. That is the maximum time he faces for his conviction of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year prison term for Sadequee, who was convicted of four counts, including conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Pakistani-based terrorist organization.

The two men, prosecutors say, agreed "to provide themselves to a conspiracy to murder outside the United States by traveling to Pakistan or Afghanistan to obtain paramilitary training from a jihadist camp and then eventually engage in violent attacks."

Lawyers representing Ahmed and Sadequee are seeking shorter terms. They note that others convicted of terrorist-related offenses have received more lenient punishment.

"Nobody was ever injured as a result of any conduct that Sadequee engaged in," said a filing by lawyers Don Samuel and Khurrum Wahid. "No serious plans to engage in any violent conduct were ever pursued. There was considerable talk and virtually no action."

In his filing, Ahmed's lawyer, Jack Martin, echoed those statements. He told Duffey a term of 8 to 10 years in prison is "more than sufficient" for Ahmed.

Five years ago, Ahmed and Sadequee met at the Al-Farooq Masjid on 14th Street. Sharing militant beliefs, they hooked up with like-minded extremists on jihadi Web sites.

In March 2005, they traveled to Ontario and met with suspects charged with terrorist plots in Canada. They later drove to Washington and took 60 amateurish videos of area landmarks. Those videos were later found on the computer of an al-Qaida propagandist in London who styled himself as "Terrorist 007."

Both men have been held without bond and in solitary confinement since their arrests in 2006.