A federal jury Thursday convicted a North Carolina man on charges related to a plot to provide material support to terrorists and wage violent jihad overseas. Anes Subasic was charged along with seven other men in a 2009 federal indictment.
In a separate trial last September, Subasic was found guilty on two counts of unlawful procurement of citizenship.
"We must be ever vigilant in our prosecution of those who seek to visit terror on our way of life," U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker said in a Department of Justice press release announcing the verdict. "This prosecution demonstrates that commitment."
Subasic formed part of a North Carolina-based terrorist cell led by Daniel Patrick Boyd. Boyd pleaded guilty in February 2011 to conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country and to a charge of material support to terrorists. According to the superseding indictment, between 1989 and1992, Boyd traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he received military-style training in terrorist training camps. He also fought Soviet troops alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
A 2008 conversation recorded between Boyd and Subasic showed the men holding "a coded conversation in which they discussed preparing to send two individuals overseas to engage in violent jihad." In another recording Boyd expressed his concerns to Subasic that the FBI might become interested in their plans.
According to the indictment, Boyd and his son Zakariya, along with co-defendants Ziyad Yaghi and Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, traveled to Israel in June 2007. The men wanted to die "as martyrs in furtherance of violent jihad." They returned to the United States a month later after they couldn't reach their destination. The men then turned to plotting attacks inside the U.S. leading Boyd to travel Virginia to scout the Marine Corps base at Quantico for a possible attack, court records show.
Boyd's two sons Zakariya and Dylan Boyd have pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The other co-defendants, Hysen Sherifi, Aly Hassan and Yaghi, were found guilty on similar conspiracy charges. Two other defendants indicted in the case have not been tried. Jude Kenan Mohammad is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and believed to be at large in Pakistan. Bajram Asllani was arrested in Kosovo in June 2010 but the European Union has rejected an extradition request.
Subasic faces up to life in prison for conspiring to wage violent jihad overseas.