NEW YORK -- A jury has convicted a man accused of helping al-Qaida by trying to set up a weapons-training post in a small town in Oregon.

A weapons training post at the ranch in Bly, oregon was just part of Oussama Kassir's scheme to recruit terror cell members, a prosecutor told a jury Monday in closing arguments.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Bruce told jurors in Manhattan that Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede, conspired to support al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden by trying to set up the training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999 and 2000 and by trying to enlist recruits for years afterward on the Internet.

Kassir watched passively Wednesday as the jury in Manhattan found he had helped support al-Qaida by teaching others how to make bombs, poison people and slit throats.

Prosecutors in the Kassir case portrayed him as a follower of militant clerics who wanted to take advantage of more relaxed gun laws to arrange training in the United States for European recruits to Islamic militancy.

The charges that could send him to prison for life.

KGW

The southern Oregon ranch that may have been scouted as a potential terrorist training camp.

Bruce said Kassir even tried to provide military-style training at a Seattle mosque before returning to Europe after a few months to pour his efforts into using the Web to distribute bombing, poisoning and terrorism training manuals.

When Kassir realized the ranch wasn't ready for a full-scale training operation, he returned to Europe to work on recruiting al-Qaida members through Web sites set up through U.S. computer servers, Bruce said.

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It was one of two victories Tuesday for U.S. terrorism prosecutors. A federal jury in Miami convicted five men of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to topple Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices. A sixth man was acquitted in the case's third trial.

"These people are tomorrow's terrorists," Bruce said of those who read materials he claimed Kassir posted encouraging militant behavior between 2001 and 2005.

He said Kassir "convinced people how to become terrorists and then taught them how to carry out that deadly mission more effectively."

"It cannot go unpunished that al-Qaida can recruit on U.S. soil," he said.

But defense lawyer Edgardo Ramos said the camp never materialized and his client was unfairly accused. He said no evidence during a three-week trial showed that Kassir agreed with anyone to become part of a conspiracy or that he tried to recruit people for al-Qaida or bin Laden.

He told jurors that prosecutors' "game plan was to scare you."

Ramos noted that prosecutors built a case against Kassir through the testimony of James Ujaama, a Denver-born Muslim convert who testified that he created the idea of providing weapons training for Muslim men in Bly to prepare them to fight the Taliban's enemies in Afghanistan.

Ujaama said the training camp never got off the ground and he never returned to the site after three visits.

Ramos reminded jurors that a terrorism expert called as a witness by the government had testified that he never heard of Kassir before his arrest in 2003.

He said there was no evidence that Kassir created the Web sites cited by the government and he derided the bomb- and poison-making manuals as amateurish. He noted that no one responded to e-mails from readers of the Web sites who asked how they could join al-Qaida.

Ramos warned jurors not to be affected by the government's frequent mention of al-Qaida and photographs of bin Laden that were entered into evidence. He said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were the "800-pound gorilla in the room" and said the jury shouldn't seek retribution for the attacks by convicting his client, a bearded man who sometimes smiled as his lawyer spoke.

"Instilling fear," he said, "is not the same as showing evidence."