By Sebastian Rotella
Orlando Sentinel
WASHINGTON — An Atlanta jury on Wednesday convicted a 23-year-old man of aiding terrorist groups after a trial that explored a subculture of extremists who used the Internet to plot attacks and form a loose network connecting North America, Europe and South Asia.
Ehsanul Sadequee, the U.S.-born son of Bangladeshi immigrants, faces up to 60 years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to materially support terrorists. The jury found that he discussed attacks with accused militants in Toronto and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Along with another Atlanta man convicted in June, Sadequee drove to Washington, D.C., in 2005 to film the Pentagon and other potential targets, then e-mailed the scouting videos to Britons who have since been convicted of terrorism charges.
“It’s a good example of how these Islamic extremists across the world connect up and start to organize using the Internet,” David Nahmias, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, said in an telephone interview. “The Internet is very hard to control, and it is exploited by the bad guys.”
Sadequee is a former college student who worked at an incense shop and a non-profit agency that aided South Asian victims of domestic violence. During the trial he acted as his own lawyer, wearing a Muslim skull cap over his curly hair and engaging witnesses in occasionally odd exchanges about Superman and the Antichrist. He argued that his Internet conversations about holy war were idle fantasies and pointed out that he did not attend overseas training camps.
“We were immature young guys who had imaginations running wild,” he said during his closing argument Tuesday. “But I was not then, and am not now, a terrorist.”
Investigators said Sadequee’s story shows how online militants can radicalize, hatch plots, exchange money and help each other reach training camps and battlegrounds without ever meeting.
Born in Virginia, Sadequee exhibited militant sentiments at 15 while attending an Islamic school in Canada, prosecutors said. Soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he sent an e-mail to an extremist Web site expressing his desire to join the Taliban, according to Nahmias.
Sadequee’s extremist activity intensified when he met Syed Ahmed, a Pakistani-American student at Georgia Tech, at a mosque in Atlanta.
In early 2005, Ahmed and Sadequee went to Toronto and met with militants there to discuss potential attacks on military bases and oil refineries. Weeks later, the two drove to Washington and filmed more than 62 video clips of potential targets including the Pentagon, Capitol and World Bank headquarters, according to testimony at trial.
Sadequee used the computer at the Atlanta domestic violence shelter where he worked to send the videos to militants overseas.
In October 2005 he communicated from Bangladesh with extremists in London and Sarajevo. The FBI tracked down Sadequee in Bangladesh and arrested him in April 2006.
Copyright 2009 Sentinel Communications Co.