ALBANY, NY, Sept 27: A Muslim accused of helping an FBI informant in a fake plot to kill a diplomat has associated with known Islamist militants and sympathised with their violent causes, a terrorism expert testified at his trial on Wednesday.

Evan Kohlmann, 27, was giving evidence at the three-week-old trial of Yassin Aref, 36, and Mohammed Hossain, 51, both charged with conspiring to launder $50,000 from the sale of a shoulder-fired missile in an FBI sting centered on plans to assassinate Pakistan’s UN ambassador in New York.

Defence attorneys wanted to bar Kohlmann from appearing in federal court because they said he doesn’t have enough experience in the field of counterterrorism and he didn’t spend enough time examining the case against Aref.

Aref and Hossain face a 30-count indictment that accuses Aref of aiding extremists linked to insurgent attacks on US forces in Iraq and lying to federal officials about his affiliation with a Kurdish political group known as the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, or IMK.—Reuters