Amid all the questioning he received, Musse was apparently never asked how he got the idea that being a good “servant of Allah” required him to become a terrorist. No one wants to ask that question, because an honest answer to it would be politically inconvenient for the elites and their fantasy narrative about Islam being a religion of peace.
“Amid tears and confessions, 3 more ISIL defendants are sentenced to prison,” by Stephen Montemayor and Faiza Mahamud, Star Tribune, November 16, 2016:
Late Tuesday afternoon, closing an emotional day of sentencing in the nation’s biggest ISIL recruiting investigation, Senior U.S. Judge Michael Davis called the parents of defendant Adnan Farah to stand before him in court. Noting that another of their sons faces sentencing in the same case tomorrow, Davis said:
“I wanted you to see me closer and understand that I would never want to be in your place, having two sons that are going to go to prison,” said Davis, who has struggled openly for two days with the fates of the young men before him.
Adnan, he told them, will go to prison for 10 years.
The scene, unfolding in a packed courtroom in Minneapolis, ended the second of three days of sentencing in the terror conspiracy case, a day that saw harsher sentences — 10 years for two defendants, 15 years for a third — for young men who pleaded guilty but refused to cooperate with government prosecutors.
Farah, 20, the last to be sentenced on Tuesday, was arrested in April 2015 when federal agents rounded up six men involved in the scheme in a series of arrests in Minneapolis and San Diego. He had applied for an expedited passport to leave the United States, but his parents confiscated it when it arrived in the mail. Davis reminded Farah’s father that the action saved his son’s life.
“Your children lied to you,” Davis said. “They lied to you about what they believed and what they were about to do.”
Adnan Farah’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, made an extraordinary plea of his own during the hearing, noting that he himself was spared recruitment to become a child soldier in Nigeria, a fate that befell six of his friends.
“I understand how easy it is to mislead children,” Udoibok said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter challenged Farah’s statement that he wished someone would have intervened to tell him and his co-conspirators that they were on the wrong path.
“He’s blaming people around him for simply not telling them that joining an organization that beheads people is wrong,” Winter said. “It’s quite stunning.”…
Musse, 21, who once described himself as “a servant of Allah,” eventually pleaded guilty and had asked for 72 months in prison. Federal prosecutors had recommended 15 years.
Addressing the judge in a soft voice and reading from a written statement, Musse said, “It’s been a hard long year for many people.” To his mother, who traveled from Kenya to support him, he added: “I love you and I made a mistake.” Relatives in the courtroom began quietly sobbing.
“I lied to everyone, I tried to deceive everybody,” Musse continued. “I undermined my parents’ existence, I overlooked the position that they had in my life. My way of thinking would lead me to destruction. I was never entrapped nor lured into this crime.”
Like other defendants, Musse listened as Davis pointed out the differences between their cases and other federal crimes, where a good educational record and job history typically predict a successful rehabilitation.
“What you’ve done is you turned us on our head,” Davis said. “You used what we used for predictors of success to deceive us in order to do harm.”
As the hearing came to a close, the judge asked Musse: “Sir, are you a terrorist or not?”
“Yes, I am a terrorist, your honor,” Musse replied….