Standing in orange jail clothes, his hands behind his back, 29-year-old Shaker Masri looked calm as a judge imposed the sentence for one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a terrorist group.
”That you were willing to die in harming others is extremely disturbing to this court,” US District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman told him.
”There is a need to deter you, people such as Mr Masri, from this type of behavior.”
Masri — who was born in Alabama but has close family ties to Syria — allegedly talked with an informant about killing a busload of US soldiers and learning how to strap on a belt-full of explosives.
He also allegedly spoke about ”heavenly rewards one would receive for martyrdom,” according to a government pre-sentencing filing.
”Masri’s goal was to be a tool of indiscriminate murder,” the same filing said.
Masri was arrested in Aug 2010 hours before he was scheduled to leave the country for a trip to Somalia, where he hoped to become a suicide bomber for Al Qaeda and another terrorist group, Al-Shabab, prosecutors have said.
He had allegedly started talking to a confidential FBI informant of his plans a little more than two weeks before his arrest.
After his arrest, investigators found a copy of Osama bin Laden’s manifesto, ”The Declaration of War Against the Americans” on his computer as well as the book ”The Islamic Ruling on the Permissibility of Self-Sacrificial Operations: Suicide or Martyrdom?”
Masri allegedly admired Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric believed to have inspired the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shootings and the attempted bombing of a jetliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
A US drone attack killed al-Awlaki last year.
Shaker did display emotion once Tuesday, interrupting and asking to speak when a prosecutor said he hadn’t renounced his ideology. But after huddling with his lawyers, he stayed quiet.
Asked later if he had any remarks, he said politely, ”No thank you, your honour.”
After his release from prison, Masri will be subject to 20 years of close supervision and monitoring, Coleman said. That will include restrictions on Internet access, she said.
Masri’s mother, who had attended her son’s hearings, died recently, and no other relatives were in court Tuesday.
Escorted by US marshals, Masri was allowed to visit his mother in the hospital in October before she died.
The judge said she accepted the lesser term for various reasons cited in the plea deal, including that Masri had spent much of his last two years in jail in solitary confinement and that his mother had recently died.
She asked attorneys, however, why they had listed civil strife in Syria as another factor justifying a lesser sentence.
”Some of his family live in Syria and it’s an added stress factor…stress about how his family is faring,” Joshua Dratel, another of Masri’s attorneys, told her.
Leading up to Tuesday’s hearing, the defendant’s older brother sought to soften Masri’s image, sending a letter to the judge describing him as lively and kind, and as ”our neighborhood’s favourite boy” when they were growing up.
”Older people used to love chatting with him, because he had a wild imagination and would tell fantastic stories,” Anas Almasri wrote.
اردو میں پڑھئے
Related tags:
Latest news, world news, current affairs, breaking news, arab country news, daily news, Islamic news, india news, Pakistan news, , india Pakistan news, current news, news headlines, Latest World News,Articles,
Latest news, latest urdu news, world news, current affairs, breaking news, arab country news, sport news, cricket news, daily news, Islamic news, india news, Pakistan news, india Pakistan news, current news,Current affairs, Economic Affairs,Islam and Human Rights, Islam and Politics , Islam and the West, Muslim Media, Islamic Society, Islamic World,Latest World News, breaking news ,Top Breaking News, Current Affairs, daily news, recent news, news headlines
No comments:
Post a Comment