The fate of Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi and Hysen Sherifi will soon be in the hands of a jury that's been seeing and hearing the government's evidence for three weeks during the trial held in U.S. District Court in New Bern.
An attorney for the US government was the first to speak to jurors during closing arguments Tuesday morning. For almost three hours he hammered away at a theme he labeled "war is deception."
The three, according to a federal prosecutor, used deception to plan a war of terror.
Jason Kellhofer often used the word 'Jihad' when talking to jurors about what he called "a homegrown terrorist network."
He said Jihad is a term stolen from the Islamic religion - a religion the defendants twisted.
"It's not a religion," Kellhofer said. "Not these people, it's more of a cult."
And Daniel Boyd, who testified against the others, was the leader of the cult, according to Kellhofer. He said of Boyd's Johnston County home, "that house was a bed of diseased thinking from 2004 at least."
Boyd pleaded guilty in February to federal terrorism charges. Two of his sons also have pleaded guilty to charges associated with the case.
When the FBI raided Boyd's house in 2009, they said they seized weapons, ammunition, cash and other terrorist related materials.
During the trial, defense attorneys have repeatedly tried to distance their clients from Daniel Boyd.
Another defendant, Anes Subasic, has declined to have an attorney represent him and will be tried after the trial for the others.
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