Ahmed Omar Abu Ali

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"Abu Ali" redirects here but may also refer to Abu Ali Mustafa of the PFLP

Ahmed Omar Abu-Ali is an American citizen who was convicted of providing material support to the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Born in Houston, Texas and raised in Falls Church, Virginia, Abu Ali was valedictorian of his class at the Islamic Saudi Academy high school in nearby Alexandria. In June 2003, he was arrested in Saudi Arabia while taking his final exams at the Islamic University of Medina. Twenty months later (February 2005), he was transferred to US custody. [1]

Abu Ali's trial in September and October of 2005 garnered moderate media attention. The admissibility of information from his interrogation in Saudi Arabia was challenged due to allegations that his interrogations included torture. In late October 2005, Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who presided over the case, ruled that his initial confession to Saudi agents, but not the later confession to FBI agents, was admissible.

In documents unsealed on September 20, 2005, Abu Ali acknowledged wanting to join al Qaeda during his Saudi interrogation, but acknowledged that the conspiracy he was believed to have been involved in, to assassinate President Bush, was merely a fantasy, not an actual plot.

On November 22, 2005, after deliberating for two and a half days, the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict.

On March 29, 2006, Ali was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his crime. While prosecutors had pushed for a sentence of life, Judge Gerald Bruce Lee explained that the (relatively) light sentence was handed down because Abu Ali's actions "did not result in one single actual victim. That fact must be taken into account." [2]

Amensty International expressed "serious concerns" regarding the trial of Abu Ali and the judge's decision to admit the confession made to the Saudi interrogators.^[1]

Abu Ali entered the University of Maryland in the fall of 1999 as an electrical engineering major before withdrawing in the middle of the 2000 spring semester.