■ United States
`Terror cleric' convicted
A Yemeni cleric who bragged about his ties to Osama bin Laden was sentenced Thursday to 75 years in prison -- the maximum -- in a terrorism financing case that was nearly derailed when the government's star witness set himself on fire outside the White House. A jury in March found al-Moayad, 57, guilty of conspiring to support and attempting to support al-Qaeda and the Palestinian extremist group Hamas. He also was convicted of actually supporting Hamas, but acquitted of supporting al-Qaeda. The judge called the secretly recorded conversations "chilling" and drew a connection between al-Moayad's desire to fund terrorism, the Sept. 11 attacks and a suicide bus bombing in Israel that was described during the trial by one of the survivors.
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