John Allen Mohammed who terrorised the US capital last year was on Monday convicted by the Virginia Beach court.

Muhammad (42) was found guilty of killing Dean Harold Meyers, a Vietnam veteran who was cut down by a single bullet that hit him in the head on October 9, 2002, as he filled his tank at a Manassas gas station. He was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and use of a firearm in a felony.

However, the jury has not pronounced whether the army veteran will be sentenced to death or be imprisoned.

Fellow suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, is on trial separately in nearby Chesapeake for the killing of Linda Franklin at a Home Depot in Falls Church. He also could get the death penalty.

The jury concluded that Mohammed used a rifle, a beat-up car and a teenager who idolised him to kill randomly and terrorise Washington and other areas last year in a killing spree.

Among the victims in the Washington area was an NRI, Premkumar Walekar, who was shot at a gas station while he was filling his gas tank.

The 12-member jury deliberated for about 6 1/2 hours before convicting Muhammad of two counts of capital murder.

One accused him of taking part in multiple murders, the other - the result of a post-September 11 terrorism law - said the killings were designed to terrorise the population.

Muhammad is the first person tried under the second law. He stood impassively as the verdict was read. Two of the jurors held hands and two others were crying.

The verdict came after three weeks of testimony in which a series of victims and other witnesses graphically - and often tearfully - recalled the horror that gripped the Washington area during the sniper attacks.

In all, the two men were accused of shooting 19 people - killing 13 and wounding six - in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia in what prosecutors said was an attempt to extort $10 million from the government.

Ten people were killed in the region and three were wounded, many of them shot as they went about their daily tasks: shopping at a crafts store, buying groceries, mowing the lawn, going to school.

At the height of the killings, the area was so terrified that sports teams were forced to practice indoors, residents were afraid to refuel their cars and teachers tightly drew the blinds of their classroom windows out of fear a school might be targeted.

At one point during the spree, a handwritten letter was found tacked to a tree near the Virginia restaurant where a man was shot, and it included the chilling postscript: "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time."

A tarot card left near a shooting outside a school declared: "I am God."