Was Atlantan a terrorist or just a day-dreamer?

By STEVE VISSER

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ehsanul Islam Sadequee is accused of conspiring to support terrorism, but as a boy his family says he was so reverent of life he didn’t squash bugs.

Sadequee, 23, goes on trial in federal court in Atlanta today when jury selection begins for what defense lawyers contend were fantasies of an immature youth who romanticized about jihad against the West and India and talked about it in e-mails and Internet chat rooms.

Federal prosecutors say Sadequee’s acts went beyond words. Just because he failed to obtain terrorist training or never made a bomb doesn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, they say. He sent a video of potential targets in Washington — including the World Bank, the Capitol and the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Va. — to a terrorist based in London, according to the indictment.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, lawyers said.

His family says he has spent three years in solitary confinement awaiting trial. He was arrested in 2006 in Bangladesh, where he had just been married.

Not even the prosecutors contend that Sadequee was close to committing a terrorist act or that he ever joined a terrorist organization. The trial — like that of co-defendant Syed Haris Ahmed, who was convicted in June — illustrates prosecutors are focusing on potential threats as well as real ones, lawyers said.

“The real issue in this case is where is the line between First Amendment speech, however disquieting, and real criminal activity,” said Jack Martin, who defended Ahmed and says the two cases are almost identical. “It is hard to say where that line is drawn. ... There is always the issue in any conspiracy case of what is talk and what is an agreement to take action.”

U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said after Ahmed’s conviction that the case didn’t involve an imminent threat because the idea was to arrest terrorists before their attacks succeed.

“In the post-9/11 world we will not wait to disrupt terrorism-related activity until a bomb is built and ready to explode,” Nahmias said then. “The fuse that leads to an explosion of violence may be long but once it is lit — once individuals unlawfully agree to support terrorist acts at home or abroad — we will prosecute them to snuff that fuse out.”

Sadequee was born in Virginia and grew up in Roswell after his family immigrated from Bangladesh. He became friends with Ahmed, a Georgia Tech student, when attending the Al-Farooq Masjid mosque on 14th Street. Ahmed later told federal agents that he became a militant Muslim and hooked up with like-minded extremists.

Prosecutors say Ahmed and Sadequee also agreed to assist Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a group that the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization focused on the fight over Kashmir between Pakistan and India.

In March 2005, prosecutors continue, the two took a Greyhound bus to Ontario, Canada, and met with members of the Toronto 18, suspects charged with plots to overthrow the Canadian Parliament and bomb a power plant and the stock exchange. The men spoke openly of attacking oil refineries.

After the Canadian trip, prosecutors say, the two metro Atlantans drove to Washington where they took 60 videos that even the agents say were of poor quality but were found on the computer of a notorious al-Qaida propagandist in London. That man, who called himself “Terrorist 007,” was later convicted of inciting terrorist acts over the Internet.

Martin, whose client has not yet been sentenced, contends the young men never got far past the wannabe stage. The videos were of little value to terrorism planning and neither Ahmed nor Sadequee ever joined the group that committed terrorist attacks against India, Martin said.

“You understand why law enforcement would be watching and would be careful about people who were saying these types of things, but it is quite another thing to prosecute,” Martin said. “There was a lot of talk and very little action.”