SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A federal jury yesterday convicted a 23-year-old man of supporting terrorists by attending an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan three years ago.

Hamid Hayat, a seasonal farm worker in Lodi, an agricultural town south of Sacramento, was convicted of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI.

The verdict came hours after a separate jury hearing a case against the man’s father deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.

The father, 48-year-old ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his son’s involvement in the training camp. Defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet in court May 5 to decide whether he will be retried.

Both men are American citizens and stood trial in federal court before separate juries. They have been in custody since their arrests last June.

Both cases initially generated widespread interest because they raised concerns about a potential terrorist cell centered in the wine-producing region about 35 miles south of the state capital. But the government presented no evidence of a terror network during the nine-week trial.

Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and a government in formant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense.

Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having “a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind” who returned from a two-year visit to Pakistan intent on carrying out attacks. Possible targets included hospitals, banks, and grocery stores.

They presented no evidence to show that such attacks were imminent or even planned. But in closing arguments, a prosecutors said the case was intended to prevent terrorist attacks “long before anybody is hurt.”

Defense lawyers for both men argued that the government didn’t have a case against their clients because it had produced no evidence that the son ever attended a terrorist training camp.

Their biggest hurdle was trying to persuade jurors to discount the men’s videotaped confessions. The statements were given separately last June during lengthy interrogations by the FBI in Sacramento.

Defense lawyers said the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night.

The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued.

The trial is the result of what the government initially thought might be a much larger case. Its investigation into Lodi’s 2,500-member Pakistani community began after agents received a tip in 2001 that Lodi-area businesses were sending money to terrorist groups abroad.