BOSTON (AP) – A federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed the conviction of a Somali refugee from Portland, Maine, who was sentenced to one year of probation in the state’s first case involving the stimulant khat.

Abdigani Hussein, who has applied for U.S. citizenship and moved to the United States six years ago, was arrested in April 2002 as he picked up a FedEx package that contained khat. Hussein was cooperative and told investigators he did not know khat contained any illegal drugs.

Khat contains cathinone, which is chemically similar to amphetamines. Federal drug enforcement agencies have included cathinone on the list of controlled substances since 1993.

Hussein’s lawyers argued khat is used in Africa the way coffee is used in the United States.

Hussein now faces deportation after the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston affirmed his conviction.

The court rejected his argument that there was not sufficient evidence for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew he possessed a controlled substance and that the government had not made it sufficiently clear that possession of khat was a criminal offense.

“There is no proof that Hussein knew what cathinone was or that he was dealing with it,” the appeals court wrote. “Nevertheless, the evidence suffices to show that he knew – in a general sense – that he was dealing with a controlled substance.”

Hussein could have faced up to 20 years in prison. But under federal guidelines, his sentence fell in a range of zero to six months because of his background and lack of criminal history.

The case in U.S. District Court was the first of its kind in Maine, but one of a growing number around the country with an influx of immigrants from countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen.

Last year, 103,000 pounds of khat were intercepted at the nation’s borders by U.S. Customs officers, prosecutors said.

AP-ES-10-30-03 1616EST