US taxi driver pleads guilty to aiding Al-Qaeda

Feb 07, 2012 |

Chicago

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A Chicago taxi driver pleaded guilty on Monday to charges linked to a scheme to funnel money to a Pakistani terror group with links to Al-Qaeda, the US Justice Department said.

Raja Lahrasib Khan, a native of Pakistan who became a naturalized US citizen in 1988, pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the department said in a statement.

When Khan, 58, was arrested in March 2010, officials said he never posed any imminent danger to the United States and had personally sent only a few hundred dollars to an alleged terrorist leader.

But authorities said his plea indicated he wanted to provide additional funds to the same individual after learning he was working with Al-Qaeda.

Khan faces a maximum of 15 years in prison but under his plea agreement the sentence will be between five and eight years in jail, and requires him to cooperate with the government. Sentencing is set for May 30.

Khan, who lived in the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan before coming to the United States in the late 1970s, admitted that he met with Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of the Kashmir independence movement.

Officials said that during a 2008 meeting, Kashmiri told Khan that Osama bin Laden was alive, healthy and giving orders. Khan gave Kashmiri 20,000 Pakistani rupees (around $200 to $250), which he intended Kashmiri to use to support attacks against India.

In 2009, Khan sent the equivalent of $930 from Chicago to an individual in Pakistan, with instructions to give $300 to Kashmiri, according to justice officials. Although Khan intended the funds to be used by Kashmiri to support attacks against India, he was also aware Kashmiri was working with Al-Qaeda.

Khan met in 2010 with an undercover law enforcement agent who posed as someone interested in sending money to Kashmiri, which led to his arrest.

At the time of his arrest, authorities said Kashmiri, the leader in Kashmir of Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami, which is on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, was looking for operatives in America.

Khan was recorded telling the agent that he was going to ask Kashmiri to teach him how to plot an attack on a stadium.

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