prosecutors were bitter because the 32-year-old Benkahla, born and raised in the U.S., had been acquitted of giving aid to the Taliban and that they were setting a perjury trap by hauling him in front of the grand jury in 2004.

The prosecutors had a different take on the situation.

Under normal sentencing guidelines, Sabri Benkahla would have received at most a three-year term for his convictions this year on charges of lying to a grand jury, obstruction of justice and making a false statement.

But for the first time, prosecutors were able to obtain a stiffer sentence by arguing that Benkahla’s lies effectively promoted terrorism by obstructing a wide-ranging terror investigation.

Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg argued that Benkahla stymied an FBI investigation by giving a grand jury misleading information about his contacts on a 1999 trip to a training camp run by a group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the U.S. has since designated a terrorist organization and Kromberg said has links to al-Qaida.