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
UN rights chief shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
