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ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Saying his words steered young men into terrorist training camps that are the lifeblood of a movement that plants bombs on subways and trains, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced an American Islamic scholar to life in prison Wednesday.

Ali al-Timimi, 42, of Fairfax, Va., who had ties to a now-defunct Pittsburgh-based magazine that advocated holy war, was convicted in a lengthy jury trial in federal court here last spring of recruiting a group of northern Virginia men to travel to Pakistan and train to take up arms for the Taliban. The men, who played paintball and went to shooting ranges to train for holy war, were dubbed the Virginia Paintball Jihad.

Before the trial, nine of al-Timimi's followers were convicted or pleaded guilty in the conspiracy prosecutors said grew in the shadow of the nation's capital in the days before 9/11 and blossomed on al-Timimi's advice in the week after the terrorist attacks.

Al-Timimi's conviction for soliciting treason and other charges marked the first post-9/11 trial in which the government won a terrorism verdict for actions tied to words designed to aid the enemy, rather than actual deeds such as providing money, equipment or engaging in combat.

Al-Timimi's name surfaced in Pittsburgh more than a decade ago. A scholar with an international following whose lectures still are sold on tape here and in England, al-Timimi was listed as a member of the advisory board of Assirat al-Mustaqeem, a militant Arabic language magazine that was published in Pittsburgh from 1991 through 2000.

Al-Timimi's attorneys, Edward MacMahon and Alan Yamamoto, characterized the scholar, who recently received a doctorate for work related to cancer research, as a gentle man of peace who had never been convicted of a crime or owned a weapon. They said he did nothing more than advise the young men to seek out a nation where they could practice Islam in safety.

They vowed to appeal the verdict, charging it was based on an anti-Muslim bias fueled by the unpopular sentiments on 10-year-old tapes of al-Timimi's lectures on Islam.

Brinkema took issue with those claims.

"This was not a case about speech. This was a case about intent. ... The real issue in this case was what the defendant intended by his speech," she said.

Brinkema said that prosecutor Gordon Kromberg specifically told jurors al-Timimi's sentiments did not represent Islam, but rather the beliefs of a small group within the faith.

She said testimony about a closed-door meeting between al-Timimi and his followers five days after 9/11 in which witnesses said al-Timimi urged them to aid the Taliban strongly supported the government's contention that there was indeed a scheme to aid the enemy.

Moreover, she said there is little argument that schools in Pakistan are used to "train people to go into subways, train stations and buildings and kill a great number of people."

Al-Timimi, who remained silent during his lengthy trial, told Brinkema yesterday he is innocent. He read a six-page statement, reciting the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and likening his trial to that of Aaron Burr, who served as vice president under Thomas Jefferson and was later tried and acquitted of treason. Finally, he compared himself to Socrates.

"I too like Socrates am accused and found guilty of nothing more than corrupting the youth and practicing a different religion than that of the majority," al-Timimi said. "Socrates was mercifully given a cup of hemlock. I was handed a life sentence."

As several women in head scarves, seated among his supporters, wiped tears from their eyes, the burly scholar, dressed in a business suit, identified himself as a prisoner of conscience and sat down.

Like Brinkema and the prosecutors, Evan Kohlman, a New York-based terrorism researcher and analyst who testified as an expert for the government, said the case had nothing to do with Islam.

"It has to do with a guy who incited a group of impressionable young people to go abroad to a terrorist training camp and get terrorist training in order to kill and maim civilians," Kohlman said yesterday.

None of al-Timimi's followers ever made it to Afghanistan. Several did leave the United States and train in terrorist camps in the mountains of Pakistan. They found themselves marooned there when the nation's mountain border with Afghanistan was closed as American soldiers routed the Taliban.

Brinkema conceded that life without parole for al-Timimi's seemingly removed role in the scheme might seem harsh, but said it's mandatory on one of the charges in his 10-count conviction, a weapons charge. The longest single sentence any of the other charges carried was 30 years in prison.

Reactions to the sentence were mixed among legal and civil rights experts.

Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University Law School in San Antonio, Texas, applauded prosecutors.

"The government has to have the ability to pierce the veil of religion and get to what these guys are advocating, and that's murder, and that is not protected speech," Addicott said.

"This is a tragedy for all of us because it brought into question the sanctity of the First Amendment," said El-Hajj Mauri Sallakhan, of the Maryland-based Peace and Justice Foundation, an Islamic human rights organization

David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, characterized al-Timimi's sentence as overly harsh and said the case raises questions about the violation of First Amendment free speech rights.

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