Of course. You didn’t think it was his fault, did you? Remember, it never is. Whether it’s jihad violence or honor killing or any act of Islamic supremacism, it is always the evils of the kuffar, or the shameless provocation of the girl who had the temerity to be raped, or the big dumb Infidel culture that was just sitting there ripe for the taking, that is to blame.
“Sudbury terror sympathizer lashes out during sentencing.” by Laurel J. Sweet for the Boston Herald, April 12 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
Convicted al-Qaeda sympathizer Tarek Mehanna this morning gave a defiant and rambling address to the court as he awaited sentencing in federal court in Boston for conspiring with terrorists in a failed plot to murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq
“I never, ever plotted to kill Americans at shopping malls or anywhere else,” the 29-year-old Sudbury pharmacist 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 told 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!”…
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….
UPDATE: Mehanna got 17 1/2 years of prison dawah. (Thanks to David.)