In what has sent shockwaves throughout the community, a 21-year-old Indian-American from Illinois was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for trying to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. imposed the 40-month prison term Nov. 18 on Mohammed Hamzah Khan and ordered that it be followed by 20 years of intensive supervised release. Among the special terms of supervised release, Khan must participate in a mental health treatment program and attend violent extremism counseling, among others.
Khan’s arrest and sentencing, believed to be the first for an Indian-American in connection with providing support to ISIL was an indication of the penetration of the foreign terrorist group into the United States and an indication of its influence on young members of the community.
Khan, a U.S. citizen from southwest suburban Bolingbrook, has been detained in federal custody since his arrest Oct. 4, 2014, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Ill. Khan pleaded guilty to these charges in 2015.
The sentencing came after the victory of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who, during his campaign, had called for intensive investigation of Muslim immigrants and, also suggested that, if necessary, their immigration should be stopped temporarily till a mechanism for heightened scrutiny was in place.
Khan was only 19 when he was arrested. The prosecution had earlier said that Khan along with a younger sibling allegedly communicated online with a “cooperating defendant” who at the time had “also attempted” to join Islamic State overseas.
According to reports, in a 13-page motion, prosecutors had said in May 2015 that the defense’s psychiatric expert, Dr. Stephen Xenakis, ignored the teen’s allegedly “increasingly violent communications”, including writings and drawings glorifying Islamic State’s jihad against “infidels” in the months before his arrest.
Xenakis in his report concluded that Khan was nonviolent and simply wanted to join a utopian Islamic caliphate and also did not search phrases such as ‘Jihad fard al ayn (jihad is obligatory),’ ‘suicide bombings’ and ‘suicide,’ among other topics.
Khan’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, had told reporters that he will argue for a sentence of less than five years because it will not serve him any good to just be in prison until he can come out and get that help.
“You’re a young man with the rest of your life ahead of you, you don’t want to spend it in a federal penitentiary,” Durkin was quoted as saying by the Chicago Tribune newspaper earlier. “I don’t think anyone wants to see American kids warehoused for being brainwashed by ISIS,” he said.
When Khan, who lived in the Chicago suburb with his parents and siblings, was charged with the crime in court, his mother Zarine Khan cried as she read her statement before reporters in a federal courthouse lobby in Chicago, accusing the terrorist group of brainwashing youths into joining their ranks via social media. “Leave our children alone!” she made an impassioned plea at that time.
Zarine Khan and her husband Shafi had also publicly condemned the bombing in 2015 in Paris that killed 17, saying that the violence committed by the terrorist groups find no support in the Koran, and are completely at odds with their Islamic faith
After his sentencing last week, Muslim community leaders from Chicago and other places said while it’s shocking to learn about an Indian-American being sentenced for connection with ISIL that probably never happened before, it also illustrates the influence of the terrorists on young impressionable minds.
“In the case of the man from Bolingbrook, there has been a unanimous outcry of condemnation from Muslim and Indian communities for his actions. But at the same time, Khan’s actions should not be used as a
tool for those who seek to demonize Muslims and Islam, and generalize about communities. This was clearly an isolated case and is not representative of Muslims in the Chicagoland, and the world at large,” Minhaj Akhtar, president of the Federation of Indian Associations, Chicago, told Desi Talk.
“Unfortunately, isolated events like this will continue, since it seems like ISIS and other terror networks insist on brainwashing the malleable minds of the youth that are most susceptible to their message,” Akhtar said.
According to his plea agreement, Khan admitted that he knew ISIL had been designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization and that he intended to work in Syria under the direction and control of ISIL, and to be under the requirement to take any assignment ISIL gave him.
Kaleem Kawaja, executive director of Washington-based Association of Indian Muslims of America, said that the arrest and sentencing is unbelievable. “The arrest and sentencing of Khan for helping ISIL is somewhat disturbing because in all these years no Indian Muslim in the U.S has been convicted of any terrorism-related charge, especially ones relating to ISIL. Several U.S. media outlets have often stated that Indian Muslims are law-biding people,” he said.
Why then an Indian Muslim would be charged?
Kwaja’s explanation was that a few young men from the Indian Muslim community in the U.S. get “mentally disturbed” when they face overt or covert discrimination in job or education. “A few of them may get swayed by the persistent ISIL agenda on internet into accepting it and taking part in terrorist activity out of anger and frustration,” he said.
“But I think the elders in the Muslim community mosques and parents in U.S. should provide prompt mental health treatment to such young people to prevent them from going in the direction of terrorism. Even though it is a very small problem now, yet we need to take care of it promptly.”
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