Hardball Tactics in an Era of Threats

Increasingly, some of Timimi's students were also pulled by country and faith. Many were U.S. citizens, but their faith emphasized Muslims' responsibility for one another. And the battles over control of Chechnya, the Palestinian territories and Kashmir were flowing into the D.C. suburbs on TV and the Internet. Web sites boasted of young men doing something about the suffering of their fellow Muslims: waging jihad.

"In those days, young men [in the D.C. area] were very interested in jihad and martyrdom," Timimi told the FBI in a voluntary interview before his arrest in 2004, according to an agent's report. Chandia, he said, "used to ask hundreds of questions regarding jihad."

Dabbling in Jihad

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities have assiduously tracked down and prosecuted Americans who traveled abroad to train with Islamic militant groups, fearing they could return and form terrorist sleeper cells.

But many Muslims say that supporting such groups was not always the same as backing bin Laden.

Royer, a blue-eyed convert, was studying at American University in the early 1990s when he became aghast at TV footage showing Serb savagery against Bosnian Muslims.

"I felt an obligation, in the same way if you were to see a neighbor being beaten or raped you would feel compelled to step in," he recalled in a telephone interview in 2003. He said he fought in Bosnia for six months.

Royer was among thousands of youths from Europe, South Asia and the Middle East who took up arms to defend Muslims in the 1990s, spurred by the horrors they had glimpsed on al-Jazeera or CNN.

"It became a very, very romantic movement," said Fawaz Gerges, an expert on Islamic militancy at Sarah Lawrence College. But some of the youths gradually became radicalized by a culture of martyrdom. And a small number began to see the United States as the enemy to target.

Long after he returned home, Royer maintained his idealistic view of armed jihad. By 2000, he and other Muslims in Northern Virginia had formed a group that played paintball in the woods near Fredericksburg, donning camouflage gear and learning maneuvers from Muslim U.S. military veterans. Royer would regale them with his stories from Bosnia.

"What was really going on was a group of young men dabbling with the idea of jihad, basking in its aura, dipping their toes in it," Royer wrote recently from a federal prison in Pennsylvania. But officials would later note what they called alarming signs. The men watched bloody videos of holy warriors in Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir. Several bought AK-47-style rifles, like those used by the guerrillas.

And starting with Royer, the men began going to Pakistan to train with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group fighting to drive India from the disputed border area of Kashmir. Royer later said he didn't think his actions were illegal since the group wasn't on the U.S. terrorist list at the time.

"Neither I nor anyone else had the idea 'I'm doing something against America,' " Royer said.