An expert witness for the prosecution testified Tuesday that Islamic charities based in Saudi Arabia, including the one an Iranian-born tree surgeon is accused of smuggling money for, were regular conduits of funding to Muslim fighters in the volatile Caucasus region.

Kohlmann explained that Chechnyans have been trying to throw off control by Russia and the Soviet Union for centuries, and that after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1990s, foreign fighters moved into the conflict in Chechnya, where they infused the local revolutionaries with their own brand of radical Islam. Atrocities were committed by both sides in the war.

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