Sacramento, Calif. – A jury on Tuesday convicted a 23-year- old man of supporting terrorists by attending an al-Qaeda 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.
The verdict came hours after a separate jury hearing a case against the man’s father deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.
The father, 48-year-old ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his son’s involvement in the training camp. Defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet in court May 5 to decide whether he will be retried.
Both men are U.S. citizens and stood trial in federal court before separate juries. They have been in custody since June.
Both cases raised concerns about a potential terrorist cell centered in the wine-producing region south of the state capital.
But the government presented no evidence of a terror network during the nine-week trial.
Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and an informant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense.
The father and son told the agents what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued.
