BOSTON, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A Boston federal court has upheld the 2011 conviction and sentencing of a Massachusetts man on terrorism charges.
Writing for a three-judge panel on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Bruce M. Selya said a jury had found Tarek Mehanna "knowingly and intentionally made that choice," the Boston Globe reported Wednesday.
Mehanna was convicted of helping al-Qaida, plotting to kill U.S. troops and lying to the FBI. He was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison.
Mehanna, 31, a former Sudbury pharmacist, was convicted of traveling to Yemen in 2004 in an unsuccessful attempt to attend a terrorist training camp and attack U.S. troops in Iraq, the Boston Herald reported. When he returned home, Mehanna translated Arabic-language material into English and posted it online to promote al-Qaida ideology, prosecutors said.
He also planned to shoot up a local shopping mall, prosecutors said.
The court rejected arguments by Mehanna's attorney his trip to Yemen was for religious studies, with Selya writing evidence pointed to something more sinister.
Selya added even if prosecutors had failed to prove Mehanna's translations aided the terrorist group, the conviction is "independently supported by the mass of evidence surrounding the Yemen trip."
A group supporting Mehanna criticized the ruling, saying the court's comparison of terrorism to the bubonic plaque was "an example of the kind of sensational language that ensured a biased trial against ... Mehanna in the first place."
