Federal prosecutors will retry a man on charges that he lied to the FBI about his son's attendance at a terrorist training camp.
The first trial of Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old ice cream vendor, ended last month in a mistrial after the jury said it was deadlocked. His son, Hamid Hayat, was convicted the same day of supporting terrorism by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan and lying to the FBI.
"In the post-9/11 environment in which we live, lying to the FBI in the course of a terrorism investigation is serious misconduct," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said in a statement Friday.
"False information may result in agents’ losing valuable time to foil a deadly plot, or perhaps bringing the wrong person or persons under suspicion."
U.S. District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. set June 5 for the selection of a new jury.
Umer Hayat was released from federal custody Monday after Burrell lowered his bail from $1.2 million to $390,000. Hayat, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, will remain under house arrest in the town of Lodi.
A separate jury convicted Hayat's son Hamid, 23, of one count of supporting terrorists by attending the camp in 2003 and three counts of lying about it to the FBI.
Hamid Hayat, a U.S. citizen who has a sixth-grade education and was working at a cherry-packing shed when he was arrested, faces up to 39 years in prison when he is sentenced July 14.
The FBI began focusing on the 2,500-member Pakistani community in Lodi shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Agents initially were interested in pursuing a tip that Lodi businesses were sending money to terror groups abroad.
They recruited a 32-year-old former Lodi resident of Pakistani descent who was living at the time in Bend, Ore.
The informant soon befriended Hamid Hayat and began secretly recording their conversations. In some of those discussions, the younger Hayat said he planned to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan during a visit there from 2003 to 2005.
Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said her client never actually attended the camp and argued that prosecutors had no direct evidence that he had.
The Hayats were arrested last June, shortly after Hamid Hayat returned from Pakistan, along with two Muslim clerics who later were deported for immigration violations.
Both Hayats gave separate videotaped confessions to FBI agents, evidence that was played to jurors and presented a challenge for the defense. The defense lawyers said their clients gave the confessions after they were worn down by hours of questioning and were merely responding to leading questions by FBI agents.
Last week, a juror on Hamid Hayat's jury signed a statement saying she was pressured into voting for the guilty verdicts.
Mojaddidi filed the affidavit as part of a request for a new trial. Prosecutors said they will fight that motion.
