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-- recorded conversations in which "Mehanna admitted to other individuals that he lied to the FBI" regarding Maldonado;
-- the November 2008 charge of lying about Maldonado during JTTF interrogations;
-- the December 2006 charge that Abousamra lied during JTTF interrogations in claiming his 2004 Yemen trip was to study Arabic and Islam;
-- Williams' assertion that both defendants went to Yemen in 2004 "to learn how to conduct, and to subsequently engage in, jihad;" to Pakistan twice in 2002 for the same purpose;
-- that defendants "continued in their efforts to train for jihad (and) received information and assistance from an individual (referred to) as Individual A, about who to see and where to go to find terrorist training camps in Yemen;"
-- in February 2004, Abousamra also entered Iraq, stayed for about "15 days" and two months later went to Syria and Jordan before returning to the US in August 2004; he subsequently visited Syria "multiple times;" he "made fictitious and fraudulent statements to the FBI" that he went to Jordan to "look for colleges," to Iraq "to look for a job" and to Syria "to visit his wife."
The lengthy 55-page affidavit, plus attachments, also claimed:
-- CW 2 was a coconspirator;
-- Abousamra had "extremist views by citing Islamic teachings;"
-- "the three men engaged in serious conversations about jihad;"
-- they discussed "going to terrorist training camps in Pakistan (and) conducted logistical research on the internet pertaining to terrorist training camp locations and how to travel there, but no concrete plans materialized;" and
-- extensive further allegations that defendants sought but never received terrorist training; that they wished to engage in jihad, but never did; and they subsequently "discussed logistics of a mall attack, including the types of weapons needed, the number of people who would be involved, and how to coordinate the attack from different entrances (but) Because of the logistical problems of executing the operation (and their inability to obtain the type weapons they wanted), the plan was abandoned."
From all this, an observer might conclude there was no plan, no weapons, and no crime in what appears to be clear entrapment using a paid informant, a coconspirator CW 2, offering testimony in return for leniency, and Maldonado (imprisoned for 10 years) promised it as well for his cooperation. Nonetheless, under US conspiracy law, if prosecutors can convince juries that defendants words implied actions they can get convictions, especially when they cite terrorism and the urgency to prevent it at all costs, even if innocent victims are imprisoned for offenses they never committed of planned.
Mehanna Friends, Supporters, and Family Express Doubts about the Charges
With no previous criminal record, his friends and family call him a maturing Muslim community leader, a passionate writer, and a young man wanting a career in Saudi Arabia as a pharmacist, not a jihadist, even though he supports the right of oppressed peoples to resist as international law allows. In the Kingdom, he was promised good pay, generous benefits, and free trips home. He was boarding a plane in Boston en route when he was arrested.
In a summer 2009 interview with the Boston Globe and subsequent statements through his lawyer, he denied FBI allegations and accused federal investigators of targeting him with bogus charges because they wanted him as a government informant, pressured him to accede, but he refused and wouldn't cooperate. That made him suspect, an enemy, and got him targeted.
