Virginia: Ex-teacher gets 15 years for aiding terror group, vows revenge

CAIR’s Randall Royer was part of the same Virginia Jihad Network and also now in prison. via Ex-teacher gets 15 years for aiding terror group – Washington Times.

A federal judge yesterday sentenced a former third-grade teacher at a Muslim school in Maryland to 15 years in prison for providing support to a terrorist organization known as the “Virginia jihad network,” which used paintball games to train for a holy war.

At the sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton, Ali Asad Chandia maintained his innocence and pledged to exact revenge against prosecutors in the afterlife, saying that “those who participated in making my children orphans … should just remember that the day of judgment is on the way.”

Chandia, 29, who taught at the Al-Huda School in College Park, was convicted in June on three counts of providing material support in what prosecutors called a scheme by Islamic extremists to use force to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia. A federal jury acquitted him of a fourth count of supporting terrorists.

Chandia was the last of 11 convicted “Virginia jihadists” to be sentenced to terms ranging from 46 months to life.

He was found guilty of serving as a driver for Mohammed Ajmal Khan, a senior military leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the U.S. government designated as a terrorist organization in December 2001. He also was convicted for assisting Khan in procuring military equipment for Lashkar and giving safe harbor to Khan during Khan’s visits to the United States in 2002 and 2003.

The original indictment three years ago stated Chandia was among a dozen men who conspired and trained at shooting ranges and elsewhere in Maryland and Virginia with AK-47 assault rifles, other military weapons and equipment, and paintball guns beginning in 2000. Some training, including military tactics, also took place at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Prince William County.

Other Virginia jihad members convicted in the probe were Ali al-Timimi, 40, of Fairfax; Randall Todd Royer, 30, of Falls Church; Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi of Alexandria; Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31, of Gaithersburg; Yong Ki Kwon, 27, of Fairfax; Mohammed Aatique, 30, of Norristown, Pa.; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, of Falls Church; Donald Thomas Surratt, 30, of Suitland; Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, 27, of Alexandria; and Seifullah Chapman, 30, of Alexandria.