Sudbury terror sympathizer Mehanna sentenced to 17 years
By Laurel J. Sweet | Thursday, April 12, 2012 |
Convicted al-Qaeda sympathizer Tarek Mehanna this morning was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 17 1/2 years in prison for conspiring with terrorists in a failed plot to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq. A crowd of ardent supporters in the courtroom gave him a standing ovation after he was given the 210-month sentence.
The 29-year-old Sudbury pharmacist also was given seven years supervised release
Federal prosecutors said yesterday Mehanna deserved to spend the next 25 years in prison for being that “rare individual who both attempted to engage in violent actions himself and also worked to recruit others to do so.”
Mehanna was found guilty last year of conspiring to kill in a foreign country and to support terrorists and of lying to investigators in a terrorism investigation.
“His plan to murder American soldiers was thwarted not by capture or a change of heart, but only by his failure to find suitable training” during a 2004 trip to Yemen in pursuit of recruitment to a terrorist camp, prosecutors said in their 13-page sentencing memorandum.
Mehanna used the Internet to spread information about jihad and set up a blog where he posted English translations of Web pages devoted to influential jihad advocates and spiritual patrons in Afghanistan and Iraq, an affidavit said.
This morning, Mehanna gave a defiant and rambling address to the court.
“I never, ever plotted to kill Americans at shopping malls or anywhere else,” he said, twitching at his orange prison scrubs as he spoke for about 20 minutes in his first public statements since his 2009 arrest on terror charges. “Muslims should defend themselves against foreign invaders. This is not terrorism or extremism. It’s self-defense. The government prosecuted me not because they needed to, but simply because they could.”
Discussing “oppression,” he added: “It’s because of America that I am who I am.”
Mehanna also told the court he was prosecuted because he would not become an informant.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty told U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. that Mehanna’s claims were “categorically false,” spurring an outburst by Mehanna.
“You’re a liar, you’re a liar!” Mehanna screamed from his chair. “Sit down!”
O’Toole called a 15 minute recess before sentencing.
In court this morning, defense lawyer Janice Bassil told O’Toole she was approached in the hallway by a juror who asked to address the court. The judge rejected the request.
“I see no reason to do that,” he said. “It would be highly unorthodox and contrary to law.”
He also declined to allow Mehanna’s parents to speak.
Mehanna’s defense team has asked O’Toole for compassion and a stretch behind bars not to exceed 6 1⁄2 years.
In his own plea, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy professor Ahmed Mehanna wrote to the judge that his son, an American-born graduate of Lincoln-Sudbury High School, was upset by the “unjust persecution of Muslims throughout the world” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that “his view was amplified” by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “and the bad advice of older Muslim friends surrounding him.”
According to prosecutors, Mehanna — who lived with his parents in a two-story Sudbury home with a white picket fence — was rebuffed by the Taliban, which cited his “lack of experience” during his 2004 Yemen jaunt. Mehanna told an informant the experience was nonetheless “it was the best two weeks of his life.”
This morning, he told the court his values were shaped by reading Batman comics as a child. The comics taught him, he said, “There are oppressors, there’s the oppressed, and there are those who step and defend the oppressed.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1061124091
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