One of the nation’s highest profile post-9/11 terrorism cases fully unraveled Friday, with federal prosecutors saying they won’t pursue charges after a judge last year overturned the conviction of a man who had been linked to a purported al-Qaida sleeper cell in California and spent 14 years in prison.
Hamid Hayat, a cherry picker from the community of Lodi in the Central Valley agricultural heartland, was freed in August after completing more than half his sentence on charges of providing material support to terrorists and lying to FBI agents.