7 US men charged as int'l 'jihad' group

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-29 10:37

RALEIGH, North Carolina: A father who led an unobtrusive rural life as a drywall contractor had militant roots dating back to 1980s Afghanistan and Pakistan and secretly led a US group plotting international terrorism, federal prosecutors said.

Daniel Patrick Boyd is seen in an undated handout photo from the Wake County City/County Bureau of Identification. [Agencies]

Daniel Patrick Boyd, 39, was arrested late on Monday with his two sons and four other North Carolina men. Prosecutors accused them of military-style training at home and plotting "violent jihad" through a series of terror attacks abroad.

Authorities believe Boyd's roots in terrorism run deep. They said when he was in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1989 through 1992, he had military-style training in terrorist camps and fought the Soviets, who were ending their occupation of Afghanistan.

Prosecutors say Boyd's time in Pakistan also included terrorist training that he brought back to North Carolina, where over the past three years he recruited followers willing to die as martyrs waging jihad - the Arabic word for holy war.

Prosecutors would not detail what the group was targeting overseas. An indictment said they provided money, training, transportation and men to help terrorists. Boyd and some of the others traveled to Israel in June 2007 intending to wage "violent jihad," but returned home without success, the document said.

Sons Zakariya Boyd, 20, and Dylan Boyd, 22, were named in the indictment. Another son, Luqman, died two years ago in a car accident.

Jim Stephenson, a neighbor in Willow Spring, said he often saw the Boyd family walking their dog. The indictment shocked neighbors.

"We never saw anything to give any clues that something like that could be going on in their family," Stephenson said.

In 1991, Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan. They were also accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. Each was sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the decision was later overturned.

Their wives told an interviewer at the time that the couples had US roots but the United States was a country of "kafirs", Arabic for heathens.

It is unclear when Boyd and his family returned to the US, but in March 2006, Boyd traveled to Gaza and attempted to introduce his son to individuals who also believed that violent jihad was a personal religious obligation, the indictment said. The document did not say which son Boyd took to Gaza.

In 1991 in Pakistan, Daniel Boyd and his older brother denied they were guilty of stealing $3,200 from the bank. When the sentence was imposed, Boyd shouted: "This isn't an Islamic court. It's a court of infidels!"

When the brothers were arrested, they were accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam. They had become the first foreigners to be convicted and sentenced by special Islamic courts set up by the conservative federal government to impose speedy trials for so-called "heinous"crimes.

Several of the defendants, including Boyd and his sons, also face firearms charges. The indictment says they had obtained a variety of weapons from handguns to rifles.