| The fiery British cleric who prosecutors said had “devoted his life to violent jihad” and had dispatched young men around the world to train and fight was convicted of 11 terrorism-related charges on Monday in Manhattan. |
| Prosecutors had charged that the cleric, Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, a former imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, helped to orchestrate the violent 1998 kidnappings of 16 American, British and Australian tourists in Yemen; had tried to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore.; and had supported terrorism by sending one of his followers to train with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. |
| In the tourist abductions, four hostages were killed after their captors, a militant group allied with Mr. Mostafa, were used as human shields during a Yemeni rescue operation. “He jumped at opportunities across the globe to support this violent jihad,” a prosecutor, Ian McGinley, told the jury in a closing argument on Wednesday. |
| The verdict, which came on the jury’s second day of deliberations in Federal District Court, marked the end of a lengthy legal battle to bring Mr. Mostafa to trial. Arrested in London in 2004 after the United States requested his extradition, Mr. Mostafa was tried and convicted in Britain in 2006 on separate charges, of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. He served a prison sentence, and after fighting extradition unsuccessfully, he was sent in 2012 to the United States to face terrorism charges in New York. |
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