Terrorism Probe Points to Reach Of Web Networks

But he acknowledged that the videos were intended to impress people associated with radical Web sites who could help him get into a militant training camp in Pakistan.

"You have to prove to them you are willing to take some risk," Ahmed told the FBI.

According to the indictment, Sadequee sent one of the videos to Younis Tsouli, a London resident considered an online recruiter for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Tsouli is serving a 10-year prison sentence for inciting murder on the Internet. A copy of the video also wound up with another of the men's Internet contacts, Abid Hussain Khan, who faces terrorism charges in England.

For Ahmed and Sadequee, the Internet provided access to a world of militant Muslims that transcended borders. At least five of the acquaintances the men made on the Internet have subsequently been charged in terrorism cases in the United States and abroad.

Among their online friends were a group of Canadian Muslims whom the Georgia men visited in March 2005, according to Ahmed's account. They discussed vague ideas for terrorist attacks on oil installations and satellites, Ahmed told the FBI. At least two of the Canadians were part of an alleged al-Qaeda-inspired cell whose members were arrested in 2006 for plotting to set off truck bombs and storm the country's Parliament.

Ahmed told the FBI he was not initially "into that . . . al-Qaeda or thing like that." His goal, he said, was to seek military-style training to help oppressed Muslims in places such as Kashmir, on the Pakistan-India border.

But he said that he and Sadequee were "brainwashed from the reading online." While expressing ambivalence about whether he could ever carry out an attack on U.S. soil, Ahmed said he was influenced by Internet radicals urging Muslims to "do something."

So the men undertook their trip to Washington. It was an opportunity "to be spies for the people over there," Ahmed said, apparently referring to militant Muslims abroad.

He described the Washington trip as an adventure, with the two men setting out from the Atlanta area on a Sunday morning in his Ford pickup truck, stopping to shave off the beards they wore as religious Muslims.

"It's like, uh, thrilling to be undercover and stuff like that," the transcript quotes Ahmed as saying.

That evening, they reached the Pentagon. The men filmed the building, according to a video made public for the first time last week in court. "This is where our brothers attacked the Pentagon," says Sadequee's voice.

"Allah Akhbar," Ahmed chants. God is great.