Biography
Tarik Shah, a martial arts instructor from the Bronx, was arrested in the mid-2000s as part of a terrorism investigation built around undercover contacts and recorded meetings. He later pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda, admitting that he agreed to train fighters in martial arts and weapons-based hand-to-hand combat and that he pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. He was sentenced in federal court to 15 years in prison and remained a prominent example of how post-9/11 counterterrorism prosecutions used confidential sources and undercover operations to pursue material-support cases in Manhattan.
