Houston Taliban-Supporter Sentenced To 15 Years, No Parole

From Creeping Sharia:

Houston Taliban Supporter Sentenced to 15 Years, No Parole


Posted on October 24, 2010 by creeping

An update to this post (*see below*), but not much more.



HOUSTON – A Pakistani national will receive 15 years in prison without parole for providing material support to the Taliban.



Adnan Mirza, 33, was sentenced on Friday and must also pay a $9,000 fine for each of the nine counts of his conviction. Mirza was convicted back in May for unlawfully possessing firearms and conspiring to provide material support to the Taliban.



Mirza came to the United States on a student visa to attend a local community college from 2005-2006, according to a U.S. Attorney General’s Office statement.



An FBI undercover investigation revealed Mirza and others planned to send funds to the Taliban. They also participated in weekend camping, training and practice sessions with firearms to prepare for jihad on 6 different occasions at a location in north Houston.



via Houston Taliban Supporter Sentenced to Prison.

Houston: Another Muslim terrorist support trial


Posted on May 25, 2010 by creeping

via Houston Chronicle.



Jurors on Monday heard two wildly different views of ex-Houston Community College student Adnan Babar Mirza, who is on trial for possessing weapons illegally and conspiring to give money to the Taliban.



Federal prosecutors painted Mirza as having violated the terms of his student visa, participated in military-like training in Texas woods in preparation for aiding U.S. enemies in Afghanistan and hoping to get some money to the Taliban, a designated terrorist organization.



His lawyer, David Adler, told jurors that Mirza was a good student who regularly fed Houston’s homeless and worked with Houston police on a local public access channel to explain Muslim ways to police and citizens.



Adler said his client did learn to fire a weapon, but never violated his visa and wanted to send money to war victims, not to the Taliban.



Mirza, 33, sat in court wearing glasses and a beige suit across the room from a 14-person panel of jurors and alternates in U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein’s court.



A co-defendant, Kobie Diallo Williams, previously pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in which he admitted to paramilitary training and donating money to the Taliban. He was sentenced to 4½ years in prison.



Jurors were shown a picture of Mirza and three other men in front of a tent while camping in Willis. In the photo were Williams, an FBI informant and an undercover agent.



Prosecutor Jim McAlister told jurors he expects to prove that Mirza violated his student visa by holding an unspecified job, and that made it illegal for him to have weapons or ammunition, while camping or otherwise.



McAlister said these weren’t just camping weekends, but were paramilitary training weekends. “(They) intended to go to Afghanistan and fight, and it was not to fight for the Americans,” the prosecutor said.



The indictment against Mirza details around $900 the government said he gathered to give to Taliban fighters or their families.



Adler told jurors that Mirza is a Palestinian citizen born in Kuwait who came to the U.S. to learn. He studied electronics and then biomedical engineering and while doing so arranged to get food regularly from restaurants to feed Houston’s homeless.



This site has more on Mirza and claims he was a member of ICNA and ICNA’s Why Islam dawah group.



Update from AP – does the jihadi’s lawyer know about ‘material support’?





An undercover officer taped conversations with Mirza and the other men in which they allegedly talked about ambushing U.S. soldiers and triggering a bomb with a cell phone, according to court documents.



FBI Special Agent John McKinley, the prosecution’s first witness, told jurors Mirza can be heard on the taped conversations talking about sending money to support Taliban families. Prosecutors have said Mirza collected about $900 for Taliban fighters and their families.



But Adler said it’s not against the law to send money to the families of Taliban fighters and Mirza collected money for hospitals and other groups but not specifically for the Taliban.



He also said Mirza can be heard in these taped conversations expressing anger about injustices Muslims around the world have experienced, but his client was just expressing emotion and didn’t intend to act on it.



The three other men who were arrested have pleaded guilty or been convicted.



Kobie Diallo Williams, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in August to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to join the Taliban and fight against U.S. forces.



Syed Maaz Shah, a former Pakistani engineering student at the University of Texas at Dallas, was sentenced in 2007 to 6 1/2 years in prison on federal firearms charges. Shiraz Syed Qazi, also a Pakistani student and Mirza’s cousin, received a 10-month prison sentence in 2007 on a firearms charge.