During a conversation two years ago in Plattsburgh, N.Y., terror suspect Tarik Shah showed how he could use his prayer beads to strangle a person, federal prosecutors allege.

The recipient of that morbid demonstration was an undercover agent posing as a recruiter for Al Qaeda.

More than a year later, in May 2005, Mr. Shah is alleged to have traveled to Maryland to meet with a former roommate who prosecutors said had an interest in acquiring videos about jihad. At that meeting, with undercover FBI agents present, Mr. Shah is believed to have sought help in enrolling in a terrorist training camp held in the mountains of Pakistan that his roommate, Mahmud Faruq Brent, is accused of attending in the months after September 11, 2001.

The allegations suggest that in Mr. Shah’s case, the path of an aspiring jihadist is not particularly lonely or even shrouded in secrecy. He is believed to have schemed during phone calls with another friend, a doctor, often more than once a day. Mr. Shah is also accused of coming to an agreement with a Brooklyn bookseller, Abdulrahman Farhane, to send money to “locations overseas to purchase weapons and communications equipment for jihadists in Afghanistan and Chechnya,” prosecutors said.

In May 2005, the government went public with its case against Mr. Shah and his doctor friend, Rafiq Sabir. A few months later, Mr. Brent was arrested and added to the case. Last week, more than half a year after the first arrest, Mr. Farhane became part of the growing list of Mr. Shah’s associates in the case.

The four are expected in U.S. District Court in Manhattan today. They will likely be arraigned on the newest indictment, which includes charges against Mr. Farhane. “Why they are being tried together is what I’m still trying to figure out,” a lawyer for Mr. Brent, Hassen Ibn Abdellah, said. “I don’t know what the links are except that they know each other. And I can only say that my client knows Mr. Shah. I don’t know about the others.”

From the case narratives provided by the federal government, a story emerges of the aspirations of two Muslim men committed to aiding terrorists in a support role. Yet even after Messrs. Shah and Sabir allegedly swore an oath of fealty to Osama bin Laden in May 2005, the prosecution does not suggest that they were any nearer to carrying out violent action than in the days before September 11, when Mr. Shah taught martial arts at a mosque in Beacon, N.Y.

Nonetheless, Mr. Shah’s alleged eagerness to teach martial arts to Al Qaeda operatives, and Mr. Sabir’s wishes to provide medical services, were not mere chatter, according to the government’s case.

At a separate meeting, with an undercover agent, Mr. Shah told of how past efforts to reach training camps in the “mountains” overseas had been frustrated, the prosecution’s complaint states. He spoke of how many of his martial arts students had “got hooked up” overseas, although none had ever spoken with Mr. Shah of intentions to “walk in a place and blow up.”