Bartamaha (Canada):- The 10-year-long saga of a Canadian man convicted in the United States of sending money to al-Qaeda may have drawn to an end Friday as he was released from prison and returned to Canada.
Over the last decade, Mohammed Warsame has been accused of fighting for the Taliban, dining with Osama bin Laden and teaching radical Islam at a school in Afghanistan.
He spent five and a half years in solitary confinement in a Minnesota prison – believed to be the longest period of time anyone has ever spent awaiting trial in the United States – before pleading guilty to a single charge of providing help to the terrorist organization last year.
Sentenced to seven and a half years behind bars with credit for time served, the 37-year-old was released Friday.
Around 6 a.m., he was taken out of the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., and transported by officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Department to the Canadian border at Detroit. Around 12:30 p.m., he was turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency.
Mr. Warsame was ultimately released and met his wife in Windsor, said David Thomas, his Chicago lawyer. As of Friday evening, he believed the couple was headed to Toronto.
“It was a long, long struggle,” Mr. Thomas said. “We’re just happy that he’s been released.”
He said Mr. Warsame would not be prosecuted in Canada. An RCMP spokesman said he wasn’t aware of any charges against the man on this side of the border.
“He was charged in the United States, did his sentence and he was released to Canada,” said Sergeant Marc La Porte.
The CBSA declined to confirm what happened after Mr. Warsame arrived.
Born in Somalia, Mr. Warsame moved to Toronto in the late 1980s. He later married an American woman, with whom he has one daughter.
Authorities in the United States accused Mr. Warsame of travelling to Afghanistan in March of 2000, and spending time at an al-Qaeda training camp, where he was trained in the use of automatic weapons. They said he fought for the Taliban, which controlled most of Afghanistan at the time, in battles against the Northern Alliance and on one occasion, attended a dinner with Osama bin Laden.
Later, he guarded an al-Qaeda guesthouse and taught jihad to students at a nearby Islamic institute, they said.
After returning to Canada in March, 2001, he was alleged to have stayed in touch with his al-Qaeda contacts and sent them money. The following year, he moved to Minnesota, where he attended Minneapolis Community and Technical College. He was arrested in December, 2003.
In May 2009, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda.
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Source:-Globe and Mail .
