Published in
News
Sailor jailed for flogging secrets to Al-Qaeda website
Ten years porridge
A US sailor was sentenced to 10 years prison for passing secrets to a Pakistan man who ran an Al-Qaeda recruitment Web site.
Hassan Abu-Jihaad, born Paul R. Hall in 1976, was arrested in Phoenix in 2007 and charged with terrorism- and espionage-related crimes. Early in March a judge dropped the terrorism charge leaving him with enough spying offenses to lock him up for a long time.
Abu-Jihaad worked on the USS Benfold in 2000. He e-mailed detailed instructions on how militants could launch an attack similar to the one of the USS Cole in Yemen. The emails were sent to Ahmad Babar, a Pakistani man who moved to London in the 1960s and has a master's degree in engineering.
Babar, who ran Web sites for an Al-Qaeda propaganda group, was supposedly in on the scheme to use the the details for an actual attack. Currently Babar is fighting extradition to the United States.