2009-02-26 01:56:00 -

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Times were tough a few years back for members of the Omar Ibnelkhttab Mosque near the campus of Ohio State University. Between 2003 and 2007, federal authorities announced alleged terrorist charges against three men who occasionally attended the mosque.
Reporters and TV trucks swarmed and members struggled to discuss allegations against suspects they knew, in most cases, only tangentially.
The last of those three, American-born Christopher Paul, is expected to get a 20-year prison term Thursday when sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost.
For the president of the mosque, the case was closed years ago.
«It's over now,» said Mounir Ayed. «Most of the people that know him very well are gone now.
Paul, 44, was accused of joining al-Qaida in the early 1990s and helping teach fellow Muslim extremists how to bomb U.S. and European targets.
He pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction _ specifically bombs _ in terrorist attacks. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to provide support to terrorists.
The Justice Department accused Paul and two other men of discussing terrorist attacks during an August 2002 meeting at a coffee shop in suburban Columbus.
The other two also pleaded guilty: Nuradin Abdi in 2007 in connection with an alleged plot to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, and Iyman Faris in 2003 in connection with an alleged plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
The three occasionally attended the «Omar» mosque, as the white one-story building is referred to. A former Jehovah's Witnesses' hall, the building sits on a narrow street on the outskirts of the Ohio State campus, surrounded by apartment buildings full of students from abroad, including many from Arab nations.
When Faris first came to Columbus in the 1990s, the mosque was one of only two or three in the city. That meant everyone knew everyone.
Today Columbus has more than a dozen mosques and a growing Muslim population.
Mouhamed Nabik Tarazi, an imam who married Faris and his wife in 1995, said he used to attend the «Omar» mosque four or five times a week. The options are so numerous now he rarely goes more than two or three times a year.
«People are moving around now quite a bit,» said Tarazi, who runs a charter school where Arabic is taught as a second language. «The community last year is not the same as the community this year.
The number of Columbus area residents giving «Arab» as their nationality was about 12,500 in 2007, up 44 percent from 2002, Census data shows.
Those describing themselves as «sub-Saharan African,» which would include the community's Somali immigrants, who are Muslim, soared 65 percent to 25,100 in 2007.
Romin Iqbal, a lawyer for the Columbus office of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said most people didn't know Paul well because he was not entrenched in the community. People who remember all three cases hope the sentencing will mark the end of the allegations, Iqbal said.
The government won't say whether the case is closed.
When Paul pleaded guilty last summer, Fred Alverson, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman, said the investigation was continuing. The government has not identified other individuals connected with the trio and no other charges are pending.
Paul grew up in the Columbus suburb of Worthington. He was one of a handful of blacks at the high school, where he competed in gymnastics and was known as a friendly, cooperative and polite student who was never in trouble.
He spent a year at Ohio State as an engineering major, then embarked on a sinister career, according to the government.

An FBI statement read at Paul's plea hearing said Paul, an Islamic convert, joined al-Qaida after traveling to Afghanistan in the early 1990s and became committed to furthering the objectives of that group and other radical Islamic fundamentalists.
As part of his association with al-Qaida, he fought with holy warriors in Afghanistan at a time when the mujahadeen were battling Afghanistan's post-Soviet Marxist government, the statement said.
The FBI said Paul also tried to recruit other individuals in Columbus to join a holy warrior group and trained members of an alleged terrorist cell in Germany knowing the group was plotting to bomb American tourists and overseas U.S. facilities such as embassies.
The government didn't say if any attacks were carried out.
Ayed, the mosque president, wasn't even aware Paul was being sentenced. He said people are more focused on surviving the hard economic times than revisiting what happened several years ago.
«If he's guilty, he's guilty,» Ayed said. «Nothing is going to change now.
On the Net
U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Ohio: www.usdoj.gov/usao/ohs