A doctor who pledged allegiance to al-Qaida and vowed to treat wounded jihadi warriors so that they could return to Iraq and fight Americans was rightly convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that U.S. citizen Rafiq Sabir, of Boca Raton, Fla., could not use his ethical obligations as a physician to escape prosecution and sentencing.