WASHINGTON: A refugee from Iraq was sentenced by a Houston court Monday to 16 years in prison for seeking to join Daesh and learn bomb-making skills.
Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, a 25-year-old of Palestinian origin who was born in Iraq and lived in refugee camps in Iraq and Jordan, was accepted into the US in 2009.
He earned his permanent residency two years later and, according to US law enforcement, in 2013 began communicating with another refugee in California, discussing traveling to Syria to fight for the Al-Nusrah group.
The next year, he discussed with an FBI informant his hopes of traveling to fight with the Daesh group and a desire to be trained in making detonators for improvised explosive devices.
He and the FBI informant also practiced shooting with an AK-47, and Hardan posted statements in support of Daesh online, according to the Justice Department.
He was arrested in January 2016 and charged with providing material support to Daesh.
“Any person who provides material support to a foreign terrorist organization will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Acting US Attorney Abe Martinez.
President Donald Trump has slashed by more than half the country’s annual intake of refugees and placed restrictions on other immigrants, saying it is a conduit for potential terrorists to enter the US.
Separately, a former Washington-area transit police officer who converted to Islam was convicted of trying to help Daesh.
Nicholas Young, 37, had tried to help another man join up with Daesh, only to find that the other man was an undercover FBI informant.
Oddly, Young was also called a neo-Nazi by prosecutors, while his lawyers defended him as simply someone with quirky hobbies.
He faces up to 60 years in prison.
Iraqi refugee jailed 16 years for Daesh support
Iraqi refugee jailed 16 years for Daesh support
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
