Al Qaeda Operative Found Guilty in U.S. Servicemen’s Deaths

A jury in New York found a Saudi Arabia-born man guilty of taking part in a 2003 attack in Afghanistan that killed two U.S. servicemen. The jury deliberated for only two hours before issuing the verdict Thursday, leaving Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun to face life behind bars. Harun, a citizen of Niger, was extradited from Italy in 2012 to stand trial for the 2003 attack, as well as a plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in 2005. He was defiant throughout his trial, insisting that he be tried as a “warrior” in a military tribunal rather than a normal court, and at one point tore his clothes off before U.S. marshals to avoid a court hearing. He watched the latest proceedings against him from his jail cell. Prosecutors said Harun made it his life mission to kill U.S. soldiers for al Qaeda, joining the terrorist group in Afghanistan just weeks before Sept. 11, 2001. “The defendant embraced terrorism at a young age and made it his life’s work,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Jacobs said in the court Thursday. Prosecutors played recordings for the jury in which Harun spoke of his dreams of “jihad” dating back to his childhood.