Thread: Pakistani student convicted on gun charges

Pakistani student convicted on gun charges
By JUAN A. LOZANO
May 24, 2007
Associated Press Writer
HOUSTON -- A Pakistani student was convicted Thursday of federal firearms charges connected to paramilitary training exercises that prosecutors said were held to train Muslim men to fight U.S. troops overseas.

Syed Maaz Shah was arrested for firing weapons during two camping trips last year. Authorities said the trips were actually training camps organized by several men who wanted to engage in holy war against U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Shah was indicted on two counts of possession of a firearm by an alien and two counts of alien in possession of a firearm affecting interstate commerce. Prosecutors said he fired an Armalite assault rifle.

But before closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors dropped the two possessing a firearm charges because of jurisdictional issues. Under federal law, a non-immigrant with a student visa such as Shah can't have firearms or ammunition.

Shah, a 20-year-old engineering student at the University of Texas at Dallas, faces up to 10 years in prison for each count when he is sentenced Sept. 14.

Shah's attorney, Frank Jackson, told jurors during closing arguments his client was the victim of entrapment. An undercover officer infiltrated the group.

"That's what the case is all about," he said. "It's not about radicalism. It's not about Muslims. It's not about jihad."

But prosecutor Shelley Hicks said Shah knew exactly what was going on at the campsite and was "preparing to go overseas because somehow our troops were waging war corruptly against Muslims."

http://www.star-telegram.com/448/story/113280.html

Throw him in jail and then deport his butt back to Pakistan. Are they screening these students, worker visas, H1B visas people at all here, I certainly doubt it

I hope they give him the full term. Maybe they can let him out into the prison yard to exercise with members of the Aryan Nation.