A federal appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday upheld the conviction of a 29-year-old Lodi man for aiding terrorists by attending a jihadist training camp in Pakistan 10 years ago.

Hamid Hayat, a cherry-packing-factory worker, was convicted in federal court in Sacramento in 2006 of one count of providing material support to terrorists by attending a camp for several months in 2003 and 2004 and three counts of lying to FBI agents in 2005.

He was sentenced to 24 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said during the sentencing, "Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp (and) returned to the United States ready and willing to wage violent jihad when directed to do so."

In Wednesday's ruling, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court upheld the conviction by a 2-1 vote, rejecting Hayat's claims that Burrell unfairly restricted cross-examination of a key prosecution witness and limited defense expert testimony.

The case stemmed from an FBI investigation of alleged terrorism support among the Pakistani community in Lodi after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Five people, including two former imams of the Lodi Muslim Mosque, were arrested in 2005 in the probe, which was based partly on evidence gathered by a confidential informant, Naseem Khan, who was hired by the FBI to infiltrate the community.

Only Hayat and his father, ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, went to trial, however.

The two imams and the son of one of them agreed in 2005 to be deported to their native Pakistan after being charged with overstaying their visas.

Umer Hayat, 55, pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI after his trial on two such counts ended in a jury deadlock. He was sentenced to time served, about 11 months in jail.

The investigation began after Khan, who was questioned by the FBI in Oregon in October 2001 during a money-laundering investigation, told agents he had seen Osama Bin Laden's second-in-command and two other wanted terrorists at the Lodi mosque in 1999.

By the time of Hayat's 2006 trial, government witnesses conceded that it was highly unlikely that the three wanted terrorists named by Khan had been in Lodi in the late 1990s, according to the appeals court.

In the meantime, however, Khan moved to Lodi in late 2001 and was paid more than $200,000 by the FBI for his work as an informant during the next several years.

The chief evidence against Hayat in his trial was testimony by Khan about their conversations, together with recordings of some of the conversations, and a videotape of his June 4, 2005, confession to FBI.

In that interview, Hayat admitted he had attended a camp for several months and said he was told to expect to receive orders on his return to the U.S.

Hayat's three convictions on charges of lying to the FBI were for earlier statements in which he denied going to a camp.

His defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued at the trial that he never attended a camp during the two years he spent in Pakistan caring for his ailing mother and getting married between 2003 and 2005. They contended his confession was the result of "insistent suggestions" by his interrogators.

In a dissent to today's decision, Circuit Judge Wallace Tashima said the disputed evidence rulings deprived Hayat of a fair trial.

Tashima wrote, "This case is a stark demonstration of the unsettling and untoward consequences of the government's use of anticipatory prosecution as a weapon in the war on terrorism."

Tahsima defined anticipatory prosecution as the practice of prosecuting suspects for certain crimes, such as providing material support to terrorists, in order to "prevent as yet unplanned acts of terrorism the government asserts the suspect would have tried to commit had he not been prevented."

Hayat's lawyers were not immediately available for comment on whether they plan further appeals.