Pakistan-born student of Georgia Tech in Atlanta found guilty of supporting LeT

A Pakistan-born student of Georgia Tech in Atlanta has been found guilty of conspiring to support terrorist groups including Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan based outfit blamed for the Nov 26 Mumbai attacks.

Syed Haris Ahmed, who provided videos of important places in Washington to LeT and Al Qaeda operatives, now faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)said Wednesday after a trial court in Georgia found Ahmed guilty of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

'This case has never been about an imminent threat to the United States, because in the post-9/11 world we will not wait to disrupt terrorism-related activity until a bomb is built and ready to explode,' said David E. Nahmias, US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

'The fuse that leads to an explosion of violence may be long, but once it is lit - once individuals unlawfully agree to support terrorist acts at home or abroad - we will prosecute them to snuff that fuse out,' he said.

'This investigation is connected to arrests and convictions of multiple terrorist supporters in Atlanta and around the world-all before any innocent people were killed,' Nahmias said adding, 'This prosecution underscores the importance of international and domestic cooperation in combating terrorism.'

In April 2005, the FBI said Ahmed and his principal co-conspirator travelled to the Washington D.C., area to take the casing videos of infrastructure targets for potential terrorist attacks, including the US Capitol, to establish their credentials with 'the jihadi brothers' as well as for use in violent jihad propaganda and planning.

Ahmed's co-conspirator allegedly sent several of the video clips to Younis Tsouli, a propagandist and recruiter for the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda in Iraq, and to Aabid Hussein Khan, a facilitator for the Pakistan-based terrorist organisations, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Both Tsouli and Khan have since been convicted of terrorism offences in the UK.

The government also presented evidence at trial that in July 2005, Ahmed travelled from Atlanta to Pakistan in an unsuccessful attempt to enter a training camp and ultimately engage in violent jihad.

Ahmed was arrested in Atlanta on March 23, 2006, on the original indictment in this case, which charged him with one count of material support of terrorism.

The initial indictment was unsealed and publicly announced on April 20, 2006, after the arrest of the alleged principal co-conspirator in Bangladesh. Superseding indictments added three additional charges.

A good news for Security agencies : Detecting sulphur in just one hair could help nab a terrorist

In a new study, scientists have come up with a method that could be used to nab terrorists, by detecting how proportions of isotopes in a chemical like sulphur vary throughout the length of a single hair.
The mid-term objective is to be able to use these methods to track the geographical movements of people, including international crime suspects and victims.
In order to carry out this study, the scientists focused on the most abundant sulphur isotopes in hair keratin - sulphur-32 (32S), which accounts for about 95 percent, and sulphur-34 (34S), which makes up around 4 percent.
This proportion can change slightly in response to people's diets and if they travel from one country to another, and the technique is able to detect these small variations.
The scientists use a laser that makes contact with the selected fraction of the hair, generating an aerosol, which later ionizes within plasma, with the spectrometer providing the exact proportions of the sulphur isotopes.
"The advantage of this method compared with others is the high resolution resulting from use of the laser," said Rebeca Santamaria-Fernandez of LGC, lead author of the study.
This advance has enabled the scientists to confirm that the sulphur variations in hair can be linked to peoples' geographical movements.
The researchers collected hair samples of more than 4cm in length donated by three volunteers.
Two were permanent residents in the United Kingdom, while the third - dubbed "the traveler" - had spent the past six months in Croatia, Austria, the United Kingdom and Australia.
"We are what we eat, and the small variations in the 34S/32S relationship reflect changes to our diet, which can in turn be related to movements from one country to another," said Justo Giner, another of the study's authors.
The results of the experiment revealed that the traveller's hair showed significant variations in the sulphur isotopes, while changes in the hairs of the two people living in the United Kingdom were minimal, and similar in both samples.
The scientists are confident they will be able to create databases that will one day make it possible to link the relationship between a specific isotope in hair keratin and a country or region, which would be of great help to the police in tracking down international criminals.