A former Sacramento State student was sentenced to be hanged Monday after a Jordanian military court found him guilty of plotting terrorist attacks, according to an Associated Press report.

Raed Hijazi, now 33, was born in San Jose, attended Sacramento City College, then transferred to Sac State, where he studied international business from 1988 to 1989. He left school after the fall 1989 semester.

More than a decade later, Hijazi resurfaced in Jordan, where he was on trial for plotting to attack several American and Israeli tourist sites during millennium celebrations two years ago.

On Nov. 26, he pleaded innocent in a Jordanian court to nine charges, including “possession of arms and explosives and conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks against American and Israeli targets,” according to an Associated Press report from Jordan.Hijazi continued to maintain his innocence, but on Monday, he was sentenced to be hanged for “possessing arms and explosives and conspiring to detonate bombs,” according to the Feb. 11 Associated Press report.

The court, however, dropped charges that Hijazi was connected to al-Qaida, the terrorist organization run by Osama bin Laden.

Hijazi was first tried in absentia in 2000, because he could not be found at the time of his trial, according to the Jordan Times. In September 2000, he was sentenced to death for the millennium bomb plots. According to a CNN report, Hijazi was apprehended in Damascus on Oct. 1, 2000 and was later extradited to Jordan.

Under Jordanian law, a suspect tried in absentia may be retried, and that trial began in September 2001.

Although Hijazi pleaded innocent, an Oct. 24 article in the Christian Science Monitor cited a Jordanian government prosecutor who confirmed that Hijazi had admitted to plotting to bomb a hotel containing hundreds of American and Israeli tourists. He supposedly bragged that “there wouldn?t be enough body bags in all of Jordan to carry away the dead.”

Court documents cited by both the Associated Press and The New York Times state that he was introduced to a radical faction of Islam through a Muslim from the Fiji islands while at Sac State. Ayad Alqazzaz, faculty adviser of the Muslim Student Association at Sac State, said they had no record of Hijazi?s involvement with the organization.

Other faculty members in the business department who taught Hijazi or may have had contact with him also had no recollection of the student.

“I do have a recollection of the class; it was a large class,” business Professor Peter Sharp told The State Hornet in November. “But I have no recollection of this gentleman.”

Sharp taught a business management class taken by Hijazi in 1989.

Hijazi still maintained his innocence Monday after the sentencing.

“Where is God?s will? Why are you sentencing me to death? You are ruling against your people. (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon doesn?t sentence his people to death,” Hijazi asked the judge Monday, according to an Associated Press article published Monday.The verdict may be appealed.