Suspect’s Internet chat was of jihad

Just a few days after Syed Haris Ahmed returned to Atlanta in August 2005, he expressed regret in Internet chat rooms that he did not follow through with his plans to wage violent jihad in Pakistan.

Ahmed, a Georgia Tech student at the time, also had federal agents nipping at his heels, keeping surveillance over him and tapping his phone lines.

Ahmed is standing trial this week for conspiring to support terrorists here and abroad.

His lawyer, Jack Martin, has described Ahmed as an immature and confused college student who talked big in Internet chat rooms and never committed an act of violence. The prosecution cannot prove Ahmed entered into a formal conspiracy to support terror, Martin said.

In July 2005, Ahmed traveled to Pakistan with the intention of joining a terrorist training camp and then waging jihad on behalf of either the Taliban or Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terrorist group, prosecutors say. But Ahmed later told federal agents that, after talking it over with relatives in Karachi, he decided against it and returned to Atlanta.

When Ahmed arrived on his return flight at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, he was flagged and interviewed by customs agents.

Apparently alarmed about Ahmed’s intentions, FBI surveillance officials soon began keeping watch over him on the Georgia Tech campus. On Sept. 13, 2005, an FBI official followed Ahmed into the Georgia Tech library, where he sat down to use a computer. Standing on a balcony above the computer console, the officer looked down and saw Ahmed call up a Web site showing how to make explosives, according to Tuesday’s testimony.

At this time, Ahmed also was telling a friend in Michigan in online chats how he regretted not taking the step toward violent jihad on his trip to Pakistan.

That former friend, Zubair Ahmed, has pleaded guilty to federal terrorism conspiracy charges in Ohio and testified against Ahmed on Tuesday as part of a plea agreement.

Zubair Ahmed, 30, also testified that he and Syed Haris Ahmed first talked about waging violent jihad against Muslim oppressors as far back as 2002. “We shared the same opinion,” Zubair Ahmed said.

Over the years, the two men continued to chat online about taking the “three steps” toward jihad —- ideological preparation, logistical preparation and actual fighting, Zubair Ahmed said.

In 2004, Zubair Ahmed testified, he went to Egypt with the purpose of going to Afghanistan to fight. But his concerned father came to Egypt and made him return home.

In one e-mail, Zubair Ahmed told Syed Haris Ahmed that “the biggest problem everyone will face for the 3rd [the final step] is our stupid parents.” But during a subsequent chat-room conversation, Zubair Ahmed testified, Syed Haris Ahmed told him he had received his mother’s permission to return to Pakistan and engage in jihad.