His lawyer claimed that he was entrapped by an undercover agent. So try a thought experiment: what if you were approached by an undercover agent, who tried to cajole you into plotting to commit mass murder? What could he offer you as an incentive? At what point would you agree? The big hole in all these claims of entrapment is that for most people, there isn’t anything in the world that would lead them to join a terror plot. Why did Ahmed Abassi agree to do so? And will he be deported back to Canada or Tunisia?
“Tunisian man gets plea deal for Amtrak terror plot,” by Rich Calder, New York Post, June 3, 2014 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
A Tunisian man charged in an unsuccessful plot to derail an Amtrak train en route from Penn Station to Toronto copped a plea Wednesday to less serious immigration charges.
Ahmed Abassi, 27, avoided terrorism charges by pleading guilty in Manhattan federal court to lying on his visa application and to immigration officials when asked why he flew to the United States in 2013.
“I stated on my visa application that my intention was to enter the United States to engage in business” as a real estate agent, Abassi told Judge Miriam Cedarbaum. “I lied because my entire purpose was to return to Canada.”
Abassi, who previously lived in Canada, “radicalized” one of the alleged train plotters, Chiheb Esseghaier, and met with him in New York City after traveling here in mid-March of 2013, prosecutors said last year in court filings. An undercover agent recorded both men discussing a plot to release bacteria in the air or water to kill up to 100,000 people. [sic] the feds said.
Abassi faces up six years in prison at sentencing on July 23 but could be released from jail and immediately deported if Cedarbaum agrees to a defense request for time served. His lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, claimed the undercover agent entrapped her client.
Abassi had faced up to 50 years in prison on terror charges.
The plea deal is a far cry from how Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara previously portrayed him in a statement last year in which he referred to Abassi as radical planning to “commit acts of terror and develop a network of terrorists here.”