"Teen headed to elite US college gets 5 years on terror charge" | Associated Press April 18, 2014
PHILADELPHIA — An immigrant teen who had earned a scholarship to an elite US college but became enamored of jihadist causes was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison.
Mohammad Hassan Khalid had earned a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University after just a few years in the United States, where his family was building a new life after leaving Pakistan.
Why would he throw all that away?
See: Tribal Troublemakers
As his parents and siblings worked to achieve the American dream, he retreated to his bedroom in a cramped apartment near Baltimore, where he came into contact online with Coleen LaRose, a Pennsylvania woman who called herself ‘‘Jihad Jane’’ in YouTube postings.
Why do I get the feeling she is a government agent?
Btw, NSA was sucking all this stuff up at the time.
‘‘The upheavals of my life were distorted into a force of hate so strong that it wrapped me in its claws,’’ Khalid, now 21, told US Judge Peterese Tucker. He said he had trouble speaking without being misunderstood.
Defense lawyers argued that Khalid was isolated and vulnerable because he was young, an immigrant, and had Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder diagnosed since his arrest.
Pffffft!
Seems like a reach to me.
Federal prosecutors say Khalid met LaRose and other extremists online when he was 15 and used his ‘‘brilliance and eloquence’’ to help them translate documents and try to recruit westerners. That got the attention of the FBI, which visited Khalid repeatedly when he was 15 and 16.
So what happened? Wouldn't work with them? Saw what happened to those that do?
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Also see:
Jihad Jane and Friend
Jihad Jane's Pen Pal
I would throw that mail out or return it to sender.
