On Thursday in a Boston court, a 29-year-old Muslim student faces being sentenced to life behind bars in a case that civil liberties groups raises profound questions for freedom of speech in America.

Tarek Mehanna, a bearded Islamist with fundamentalist beliefs, was convicted last year for conspiring to provide support to terrorists by downloading jihadi videos from the internet and translating Islamist documents that he found online.

Prosecutors portrayed Mehanna as a dedicated radical who tried, and failed, to get terrorist training in Yemen in 2004 and then devoted himself to promoting and spreading the violent views of radical Islam in America. Defence lawyers had insisted that Mehanna’s trip to Yemen was to find a religious school and that his radicalism has been greatly overstated. They say he was a family man, angry at American foreign policy, who considered himself an outspoken Islamic intellectual and saw the west’s treatment of Muslims as wrong.

However, regardless of which version of Mehanna’s beliefs was the truth, civil liberties groups say the Mehanna case is a huge setback to America’s freedom of speech and that he was essentially prosecuted for “thought crimes” that should be constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. “It is thought crime. We should be very concerned about this,” said Steve Downs, a New York state lawyer who works with various groups examining legal cases brought against Muslims in the decade since September 11.

Some observers believe that radical Muslims get different treatment to other extremist groups. Mehanna was convicted of supporting terrorism despite there being no proven active link between him and any terrorist or terrorist organisation, and his activities appeared to consist of spreading easily available material he found on the internet. There is no evidence he actively plotted to take any terrorist action in the US, but he now faces a possible life sentence in jail.

There is also another twist in the case. Mehanna has said that he was only prosecuted after he refused to become an FBI informant. He said he was approached by FBI agents in 2008 as he was about to take up a job in Saudi Arabia and told he would be prosecuted for his activities unless he agreed to become an informant.

His lawyers pointed out: “There was no evidence that Mehanna’s actions actually threatened United States security interests. There was no evidence that Mehanna provided any tangible material support such as funds or weapons to terrorist activity or to al-Qaida,” they said in a statement.   »»» guardian.co.uk

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