Guilty: Lodi Man Attended Terror Camp

"A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a 23-year-old man of supporting terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan three years ago. Hamid Hayat, a seasonal farm worker in Lodi, an agricultural town south of Sacramento, was convicted of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI," Reuters reports. "Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having 'a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind' who returned from a two-year visit to Pakistan intent on carrying out attacks. Possible targets included hospitals, banks and grocery stores. They presented no evidence to show that such attacks were imminent or even planned. But in closing arguments, a prosecutors said the case was intended to prevent terrorist attacks 'long before anybody is hurt.' Defense lawyers for both men argued that the government didn't have a case against their clients because it had produced no evidence that the son ever attended a terrorist training camp . . . Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and a government informant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense."

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