Chicago Taxi Driver Admits Supporting Al Qaeda

Update: One June 8, Khan was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for attempting to provide material support to terrorists.

Raja Lahrasib Khan, a Chicago taxi driver linked to senior Al Qaeda operative Ilyas Kashmiri, pleaded guilty on Monday to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, admitted trying to send funds to Kashmiri, the former operational chief for Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami, a Pakistan-based terrorist organization, to purchase explosives to be used in an act of terrorism. According to the Department of Justice, Khan had previously "provided hundreds of dollars" to Kashmiri, whom he first met in Pakistan in the early to mid-2000's.

Kashmiri, who was reportedly killed in a drone attack on South Waziristan, a Taliban stronghold, in june 2011, has been indicted in a separate case for allegedly helping two other Chicago residents plan a terrorist attack against the officers and employees of a Danish newspaper that previously print controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. One of the men, David Coleman Headley, pleaded guilty in 2010 to helping plan the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 170 people.