Presumably Judge Brinkema and the others who are involved in this case are convinced that Ahmed Minni is not interested any longer in waging violent jihad. We can all hope they’re right.
“Northern Va. man pleads guilty to 2009 terrorism charge,” by Salvador Rizzo, Washington Post, April 21, 2023:
A Virginia man who left the United States more than 14 years ago to fight alongside extremist groups in Afghanistan pleaded guilty Friday to a terrorism charge in federal court in Alexandria, but U.S. prosecutors are not seeking prison time because he already spent nearly 13 years in custody in Pakistan.
In November 2009, Ahmed Ameer Minni was one of five young men from Northern Virginia who suddenly left the country without notifying their families. They left behind only a video they had produced showing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and photos of civilian casualties as a narrator declared that “physical jihad against the disbelievers becomes obligatory,” according to an FBI affidavit.
Back home in the United States, their families had alerted the FBI about the disappearances and provided agents the jihad-themed video.
All five were arrested in Sargodha, Pakistan, in December 2009 on terrorism-related charges after authorities in that country received information from the FBI, according to a lawyer involved in the U.S. case. They were convicted and imprisoned for more than 10 years in Pakistan, U.S. court records show.
After that, more than two years passed before Pakistan extradited three of the men — Minni, Aman Hassan Yemer and Ramy Said Zamzam — to face similar charges in the United States, which were first filed in 2009. The others, Umar Farooq Chaudhry and Waqar Hussain Khan, remain in Pakistan with pending extradition requests, according to U.S. officials. While Chaudhry is still being held by Pakistan, Khan is not in custody, a U.S. prosecutor said Friday….
However, in the days after his arrest in December 2009, Minni agreed to speak voluntarily with the FBI and stated that he “hoped to get weapons training, and wanted to become a militant, as opposed to a suicide bomber,” U.S. officials said.
“According to Minni, he saw himself dying in combat against American soldiers,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit at the time.
Minni, now 33, enlisted “the other four defendants to join him in traveling overseas,” according to a filing from federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. A recruiter who called himself “Saifullah” reached out to Minni online beginning in May 2009 and “provided guidance on how to travel in Pakistan in a manner that would not arouse suspicion” — recommending that the men be clean-shaven, for example, U.S. authorities said in court filings….
“I’m very pleased,” U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said at the outset of the hearing, calling the plea agreement for Minni “a very reasonable resolution” of the nearly 15-year-old terrorism case against him.
Gibbs, in a sentencing brief filed in Minni’s case Friday, wrote that “based on the particular facts and circumstances of this case, it is the government’s position that the time already spent in Pakistani custody serves as adequate deterrence to future criminal conduct.” He asked Brinkema to impose a sentence of time served, significantly less than the 15-year maximum prison term allowed under federal law….
Fitna says
LMAO….we live in a crazy world or at least some people like this judge do. Time and time again we treat these monsters with kid gloves.
Obama released all the terrorists from Gitmo and as I recall 30% returned to terrorism and went on to injure/rape/kill.
What’s worse is that nobody ever pays a price for being nice to terrorists. If you paid a hitman to go murder a random family or group of people, you go to jail. If you release evil terrorists and they do the same, you get away scot-free.
Sick, demented, disgusting evil world we live in…where terrorist wreak havoc on our lives and we have people in positions of power whose duty is to protect us from them, who are enabling even more terrorism against us.
The whole system has to change…the weak judges need to be fired and jailed along with politicians who do the same.
James Lincoln says
Fitna says,
“The whole system has to change…the weak judges need to be fired and jailed along with politicians who do the same.”
Yes, judges and politicians need to be held accountable for their actions.
There is NO accountability right now…
maria says
yes, the “weak” judges are traitors who wnat to destroy the US.
They must be jailed for life without parole