Mehanna friend said to seek camps for training

An American citizen who traveled to Pakistan and joined a terrorist training camp more than a decade ago told a federal jury yesterday that he provided an associate of accused terrorist supporter Tarek Mehanna with contacts in Yemen, with the understanding that they, too, wanted to train for jihad.

Jason Pippin, 34, a native of Georgia, said yesterday that Mehanna’s close friend Ahmad Abousamra traveled to California in 2003 to discuss in person contacts he had in Yemen and ways to seek training.

Abousamra did not want to discuss such matters over the Internet, Pippin said.

Pippin said that Abousamra did not specify his travel plans to him, but that he told him it was to train. “He had a few friends who were like-minded that were set to be jihadi,’’ Pippin said.

“He described them as a circle of friends of like-minded individuals who are of the same beliefs on these issues,’’ he said.

Pippin said he understood Mehanna, whom he knew under his blog name Abu Sabaayaa - translated loosely as father of children - was among them.

Pippin said that much of his communication was with Abousamra and that he did not speak of the trip with Mehanna. But prosecutors sought to use his testimony yesterday to show that Abousamra and Mehanna were engaged in a conspiracy to join a training camp when they traveled to Yemen in February 2004, just months after Abousamra’s visit to California.

Mehanna and Abousamra are charged with conspiring to support terrorists and to kill in a foreign country and for traveling to Yemen with the alleged goal of seeking terrorist training. Abousamra fled to Syria after he was first questioned by federal authorities in 2005 and remains at large.

Mehanna, 29, who was living with his parents in their Sudbury home before his initial arrest in 2008, is contesting the charges in US District Court in Boston. He has maintained his innocence, saying he went to Yemen to seek schooling on Islamic law and the Arabic language.

Mehanna is also charged with conspiring to support terrorist organizations by distributing and translating materials promoting jihad on the Internet, following Al Qaeda’s call to promote its ideology in the West. He does not deny translating documents, but said his views on foreign policy and opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were free speech protected by his First Amendment rights.

A third man who planned to join Mehanna and Abousamra on the trip to Yemen, but who returned after a layover, is cooperating with authorities and is expected to testify at the trial.

During much of his three hours of testimony yesterday, Pippin described his own travels in search of jihad, which he defined as a struggle to defend Muslims.

A convert to Islam at age 14, Pippin traveled to Pakistan in 1996 and underwent several months of terrorism training, which included lessons in small arms use and fighting tactics.

He returned for training in 1997 and traveled to countries across the Middle East, often returning to the United States. At one point, in 1999, he served as an imam, or spiritual leader, at a mosque in Atlanta.

In 2004, he attempted to return to Yemen to further his studies, but failed to obtain a visa to enter the country.

He has married three times and currently lives in Canada, where he translates Arabic documents into English.

Pippin said he had a general understanding of jihad as defending Muslims and their lands when he began to study Islam as a teenager.

His views, like those of many others, he said, grew more extreme after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when he began to believe that it was permissible to target civilians and to conduct suicide bombings.

Pippin said he met Abousamra and Mehanna over the Internet, in forums where many expressed radical views. Pippin met Abousamra in person in Sacramento in 2003, he said.

Pippin said he provided Abousamra with information about an Egyptian who had been living in Yemen who may be able to help him find a training camp, and he also gave him information about a school in the country.

Pippin said that Abousamra told him his ultimate goal was to fight in Iraq, rather than against security forces in Afghanistan, because it would be more “virtuous’’ to fight American soldiers.

Abousamra had asked him to join him on the trip, Pippin said, but he did not because he is white and would be targeted in the foreign land.

“I’d stick out as a sore thumb,’’ Pippin said. “I’d have more of a chance of being in a beheading video than actually getting there.’’

But he was surprised to see Abousamra back on Internet forums months after his 2004 trip to Yemen.

Abousamra had told him, he said, that he failed to find any camps.