 He pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of conspiring to provide aid to a known foreign terrorist organization, namely al-Qaeda.However, the plea was undertaken to spare him and his family a trial and sentence of 30 years after he had been in solitary confinement for 31 months and had been pursued by two separate paid FBI informants in the post-9/11 hysteria.Shah was released from prison after 13 years in March 2018.