Sentencing delayed in terror case

Alabama case could hinge on relationships

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky, Dec 24, (AP): A federal judge has delayed sentencing until late January for a pair of Iraqi nationals who pleaded guilty to conspiring to send weapons, cash and explosives to alQaida in Iraq.

US District Judge Thomas B. Russell rescheduled for Jan 29 the sentencing of 30-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan and his co-defendant, 24-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi. Sentencing had originally been planned for Jan 3 in federal court in Bowling Green.

Alwan pleaded guilty in December 2011. Hammadi bypassed a trial and entered a guilty plea in August.

The two men had faced charges of trying to send a variety of weapons, including rifles, rocket propelled grenades and Stinger missile systems, along with other explosives and cash to the terrorist organization in Iraq.

Alwan’s attorney, Scott Wendelsdorf, requested the delay.

The terrorism case against an Alabama man accused of planning to wage Islamic jihad in Africa may hinge on just how well he knew a man on the FBI’s most-wanted terrorist list.

Federal prosecutors portrayed Randy Wilson as an Islamic radical who wanted to reunite with Omar Hammami. He is an American who also grew up in Alabama but has since become one of the most wellknown jihadists in Somalia.

Wilson and another American who lived in Alabama for the last year, Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, are accused of plotting to leave the country to join Islamic radicals fighting in North Africa. A Yemeni soldier mans a checkpoint at the entrance to the capital Sanaa, on Dec 24, following the kidnapping of three foreigners. Gunmen suspected of links to al-Qaeda kidnapped two Finns and one Austrian in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Dec 21, security

officials told. (AFP)