WASHINGTON, 12 March 2005 — A Yemeni cleric and his assistant were convicted Thursday of plotting to finance Al-Qaeda and Hamas in a federal court in New York City.

The Justice Department’s victory came in one of the government’s most visible terrorism-financing prosecutions. The dramatic case gained international attention last year when an informant who was supposed to be their star witness set himself on fire outside the White House.

Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad, 56, a prominent Yemeni who once held a government post in his country, and Mohamed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, 31, were found guilty on all but two of the 10 charges of conspiracy to support Al-Qaeda and Hamas.

The five-week trial focused on secretly recorded conversations taken in a German hotel in January 2003 that showed the an undercover FBI agent offering to donate $2.5 million to terrorism causes and the defendants discussing their plans to deliver the money to Hamas, a Palestinian militant group.

In the video, Al-Moayad boasted that two decades ago he had tutored Osama Bin Laden in Islamic law and that the Al-Qaeda leader had called him “my sheikh.”

The two men were arrested by German police shortly thereafter and extradited to the United States. The case caused outrage in Yemen, where Al-Moayad is a well-known cleric and high-ranking member of the Islamist opposition Islah Party.

In interviews given to the press, several jurors said that none of the 12-member panel had expressed any serious doubt during deliberations regarding the guilt of the two men, but said evidence dealing with the sheikh’s alleged links to Al-Qaeda were weak.

The jurors said the videotapes had been decisive in their decision. “We saw the videotapes. There was so much there.” Each juror had kept transcripts of prosecution translations before them in the jury room.

Key pieces of evidence included linking Sheikh Al-Moayad to funneling Al-Qaeda fighters to Afghanistan and Bosnia, and an application form to an Al-Qaeda training camp that listed Al-Moayad as the sponsor.

Al-Moayad could get 60 years in prison. Zayed could get 30 years.

Defense attorneys argued that their clients were victims of a government sting orchestrated by Mohamed Alanssi, the prosecution’s star witness, who arranged the meeting in Germany and later set himself on fire outside the White House in an attempt to gain the attention of the FBI, which he believed should pay him for his work on the case.

The embarrassing incident caused prosecutors to drop Alanssi as their star witness, which initially caused a setback for the government’s case.

The defendants protested loudly when their verdict was announced, shouting to the jurors in Arabic that the trial was unfair.

Sheikh Al-Moayad’s lawyer said the conviction would be appealed.