Although Syed Haris Ahmed was "one step removed from a bomb thrower," he conspired to support terrorism here and abroad, federal prosecutors alleged Monday.
Assistant U.S. attorney Robert McBurney, in opening statements of the former Georgia Tech student's terrorism trial, said Ahmed made casing videos of Washington-area landmarks in April 2005 that wound up in the hands of extremists.
Ahmed also traveled to Pakistan in July 2005 with the intention of joining a military training camp and waging jihad in the mountains of Kashmir, McBurney said, adding that Ahmed never followed through on that plan.
During the Washington trip, Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, who will be tried later, took videos of the security stations at the Capitol, the Energy Department, the World Bank and fuel tanks just outside the city.
Through the videos, Ahmed could tell other like-minded extremists that they were able to gain close access to some of the most sensitive targets in the nation's capital, prosecutors said.
"That's how close we can get," Ahmed was saying according to McBurney. "Look what I can do for you. I can get right up next to the nation's Capitol."
Jack Martin, Ahmed's lawyer, countered that his client never entered into a formal agreement to provide support for terrorists — an essential element of the government's conspiracy charge.
"There's no doubt there's a lot of talk about the responsibility to go to jihad," Martin said. But the question is whether Ahmed was having "passing random thoughts, momentary ideas, childish fantasies, unformed incohate notions," he said.
Martin called the videos "silly, amateurish. It was nothing more than a childish act to achieve stature from people abroad."
Ahmed, 24, faces a conspiracy charge of providing support for acts of terrorism in the United States and abroad. U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey is presiding as judge and jury in the trial, expected to last about a week.
Ahmed was arrested in March 2006 after he gave a number of statements to counterterrorism agents. The interviews show an introverted college student who was drawn to Internet sites and chat rooms espousing the annihilation of the enemies of Islam.
Ahmed chose to have a bench trial so he could give a closing argument and deliver "the message of Islam."
If convicted, Ahmed, who already has spent three years in isolation at the federal penitentiary awaiting trial, faces up to 15 years in prison.
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