Washington, Dec 15 (IANS) A US court has sentenced two Americans linked to two Pakistan-based terrorist organisations to 13 and 17 years in prison for supporting terror groups and providing them with material aid for attacks in the US and abroad.
US district Judge William Duffey Jr. of federal court in Atlanta Monday sentenced Pakistan-origin Syed Haris Ahmed, 25, of Atlanta and Bangladesh-origin American Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 23, of Roswell, Georgia, following their convictions earlier this year in separate but related criminal trials.

While Sadequee was sentenced to a term of 17 years in prison, Ahmed was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Both prison terms would be followed by 30 years of supervised release.

“This is not about your faith,” Judge Duffey Jr. told them. “This is about your conduct. This is about the rule of law in this country that you have decided does not apply to you.”

Like David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, charged by the FBI with involvement in the Mumbai terrorist attack, Sadequee and Ahmed too were in contact with the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taeba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

However, unlike Headley, who sent video footage and photographs of possible LeT targets in India, Sadeequee and Ahmed sent video clips of possible LeT targets in the US.