prior to sentencing that he considered himself a âprisoner of conscienceâ who was being persecuted for his Islamic beliefs. The district court judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema, reluctantly ordered the life sentence against Al-Timimi, saying she was bound by federal guidelines.Al-Timimi, 42, of Fairfax, Va., had ties to a now-defunct, Pittsburgh-based magazine that advocated holy war, was convicted last spring of recruiting a group of northern Virginia men to travel to Pakistan and train to take up arms for the Taleban. The men, who played paintball and went to shooting ranges to train for holy war, were dubbed the Virginia Paintball Jihad. Al-Timimiâs attorneys 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-Timimiâs lectures on Islam. Although Brinkema called the punishment âvery draconian,â she said she had no choice under congressionally mandated minimum sentencing requirements.