The CBC News story below makes it sound as if Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy is mentally ill and very, very sorry for what he was plotting. This story, however, gives a different impression:
“Canadian who plotted terror attacks deserves life in prison: U.S. prosecutors,” by Peter Goffin, Canadian Press, March 12, 2018 2:53 pm EDT
American prosecutors are requesting a life sentence for a Canadian man who admitted to plotting terrorist attacks on New York City landmarks at the behest of a high-ranking Islamic State operative.
Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, a 20-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., pleaded guilty in October 2016 to planning bombings and mass shootings at Times Square, in subway stations and at concert venues while still a teenager.
With his sentencing scheduled for April 9, American federal prosecutors have asked a judge to send El Bahnasawy to prison for life, in accordance with U.S. guidelines for punishing similar terror offences.
“El Bahnasawy’s willingness to kill innocent civilians and martyr himself for ISIS, his absolute commitment to ISIS at the time of his arrest, and his deeply disturbing conduct since then … powerfully support a single conclusion: the incapacitation of El Bahnasawy should be total and lifelong,” U.S. prosecutor Geoffrey Berman said in a written submission filed to a New York federal court.
El Bahnasawy’s lawyers have requested a sentence “no greater than necessary to comply with (the law),” and suggested he be released from custody in his mid-twenties, “when his cognitive development will be complete.”
El Bahnasawy, a Canadian citizen who emigrated from Kuwait as a child, spent several months in treatment at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto in 2014, court documents show.
In a handwritten letter submitted to the court on March 2, El Bahnasawy apologized for his behaviour and asked for a “second chance,” recounting his years of substance abuse, mental health issues and multiple suicide attempts.
“I want to experience life away from drugs and away from war and violence,” he wrote. “I want a stable life and I want to stop having extreme turns that keep getting me in trouble, like my turn towards drugs or my turn towards jihad.”
But Berman argued in his submission to the court that neither mental illness nor addiction justify, explain or mitigate El Bahnasawy’s criminal actions.
“If anything, El Bahnasawy’s asserted instabilities and addictive tendencies only further underscore the need for a sentence of life imprisonment to protect the public from a future attack or other criminal conduct by El Bahnasawy,” Berman said.
Since being incarcerated in a New York corrections facility, El Bahnasawy has used opioids and marijuana multiple times, and “marked the walls of his prison cell with images and statements expressing his support for ISIS and terrorist attacks, and warning that more attacks were to come,” Berman said in his submission.
One photo of El Bahnasawy’s cell walls submitted to court shows a scrawled list of high-profile terror attacks, including 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, encircled by what appears to be a heart and the words, “and more coming.”…
Yet his mother says that El Bahnasawy has “experienced [an] unbelievable sense of guilt.” She wouldn’t be lying to us, now, would she?
“Canadian parents plead for mercy ahead of son’s sentencing in NYC bomb plot,” by Susan Ormiston and Nazim Baksh, CBC News, March 21, 2018 (thanks to the Geller Report):
The parents of a Canadian man convicted of plotting ISIS attacks against busy New York City landmarks say their son was a mentally ill teenager and doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison, however horrible his crimes.
Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, 20, of Mississauga, Ont., pleaded guilty in October 2016 to conspiring with ISIS operatives in the failed plan to bomb Times Square and the city’s subway system.
At his sentencing hearing in federal court on April 9, U.S. prosecutors will argue for life in prison, but his parents are appealing for a lesser sentence and treatment for their son.
In an exclusive interview with CBC News and the Toronto Star, Khdiga Metwally and Osama El Bahnasawy say they realize the gravity of their son’s crimes.
But both say they firmly believe their son’s history of mental illness and drug addiction made him vulnerable to manipulation — first by ISIS recruiters, and then by the intelligence agents who were tracking him.
“We were struggling for this sick boy, and he [was] struggling for himself,” says Metwally, her voice shaking. “Other people try to manipulate him when he was so isolated on the internet, to do violence.”
El Bahnasawy had no criminal record and no history of violence, his parents say. Court documents report he was “radicalized mostly online by ISIS,” beginning about eight months before his arrest.
He had previously described himself as an atheist, his father says.
“He didn’t even know how to pray.”
‘Please, take the medications’In the fall of 2015, El Bahnasawy was 17 years old and living at home with his parents in a quiet suburban neighbourhood west of Toronto. He’d been kicked out of Grade 11 for acting out and, unbeknownst to his parents, started spending days at a time in ISIS chat rooms. Soon El Bahnasawy was in contact with a high-level ISIS recruiter and an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS agent.
At that time, El Bahnasawy had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been in and out of drug rehab and mental health facilities five times, his parents say. He started complaining that the daily prescription drug regimen that had stabilized his moods was making him drowsy and causing him to gain weight.
“We tried to convince him, ‘Please, take the medications. It’s very important,'” his mother says….
Metwally says her son has “experienced [an] unbelievable sense of guilt” and with good treatment can be rehabilitated.
“We ask for mercy,” his father says.
Sentinel says
I’m sorry to pour cold water on the hypothesis but you can’t be mentally ill and sorry at the same time, since the suggestion is that he does not have the capacity to know right from wrong, so why would he want to apologise ?
The truth is, like any Muslim, he’ll tell any lie to get what he wants, whether it’s asylum, money, free housing, drugs or a get out of jail free card.
If he’s apologising at the same time that he is writing insults and terror threats on his cell wall, then he is the most dangerous Jihadist of all – one who cannot be reformed.
Sons of Liberty says
The cell wall drawings show exactly who he is ,….a committed Muslim jihadi seeking to do harm to the United States . If he were sorry he wouldn’t have drawn those images .
James says
When are jihadi murderers, traitors, seditionists, rabble-rousers, conspirators, slavers and other Mohammedans and Mozlems going to be given the death penalty as a matter of course ?
tom parry says
For humankind sake just hang em in the market square.
David says
Tom, it is “personkind.” Please use that term otherwise you might trigger the Canadian PM.
AleX says
Jihad starts at home, at the kitchen table.
Parents have the same seed of madness and they are responsible too.
Jihadis should have their house demolished and all goods confiscated.
Japetto Danatelli says
… “marked the walls of his prison cell with images and statements expressing his support for ISIS
He’s like a severed snake head that still tries to bite you. This guy’s mind is so filthy from the hateful teachings of muhammad he has to satiate that hate by scratching it on a wall. And it’s always the same after they’re caught, there’s some excuse that has nothing to do with islam, like they were on drugs, or bored, or culturally confused. And I suppose the defense uses this to distance their client from the primary motivating force which is always, by their own admission, the religion of islam. He’s not some ideologue fighting for some larger cause, they might argue, he’s just some confused young person crying for attention. A truly repentant person would not be scrawling ISIS hate on the wall of his cell. His father asks for “mercy,” but I say another mass murder in New York for islam does not inspire mercy. A spontaneous act of uncontrolled anger might deserve mercy, the desperate crime of a hungry person might too. But planned mass murder for a violent and hateful ideology is more akin to treason than a moment of human weakness that deserves mercy. Islam itself is merciless to its enemies, Christians are persecuted and run out of town for muslim bigotry, innocent civilians are terrorized or murdered for jihad, homosexuals are thrown off buildings, little girls are mutilated and forced into “rapish” marriages, “Blasphemers” and apostates are subjected to islam’s worst punishments… none of these victims get “mercy.” They get only the firm hand of islam’s brutal laws and 7th century bigotry shoved up their innocent a$$. This man plotted murder for the most unmerciful ideology on the planet. Don’t embarrass yourself by asking for mercy.
Walter Sieruk says
This vicious and malicious jihad -minded Muslim scheming to engage in a murderous Islamic terror massacre in NYC was both evil and insidious. . This should show that we need not feel fear but keep aware of our surroundings and stay alert to anything that looks not quite right. As in “What’s wrong with this picture? Then go ,if something wrong is seen, and tell the right person about it. For example, in NY.NY that Tee-shirt vendor who saw some smoke come out of a parked van and then told a police officer about it. Furthermore , as Americans we should and must remember that for the United States to continue as a great power in the world in spite of the current threats of the Islamic terrorism by jihadist /Muslim terrorists who are operatives of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other jihadists of other similar jihad terror entities. Americans then should have Vigilance, Conviction and, of course, Fortitude. As one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had declared, Thomas Jefferson, “Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.” and “A conviction that we are right accomplishes half the difficulty of correcting wrong.” Likewise, Mr. Jefferson had also stated “Fortitude…teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them.” So in other words we , as Americans ,should have learned keep moving on strongly with Vigilance, Conviction and Fortitude.
LeftisruiningCanada says
““We were struggling for this sick boy, and he [was] struggling for himself,””
Interesting choice of word there.
What’s the arabic for “struggle” again?
gravenimage says
Spot on!
Jayell says
And the German word?
gravenimage says
Parents of Muslim who plotted jihad massacre in NYC ask for mercy for him as he scrawls “kill kuffar” on cell wall
……………………
That pretty much sums it up…
Phil Copson says
On the other hand – keeping him in prison in the USA is a very costly way of protecting the American public from somebody who hasn’t actually committed a jihad attack, and was probably wound-up in part to plan one by FBI agents looking for an easy high-profile conviction. FBI agents acting as “Agent Provocateur” with months of encouragement and needling seems to be a recurring pattern, and doesn’t help catch the really determined and dangerous jihadi anyway – it just entraps border-line cases.
Ten years prison plus cancellation of citizenship and deportation to Kuwait will have exactly the same effect in protecting the American public, and be vastly cheaper. (He obviously doesn’t see himself as American, therefore he isn’t.) Better still, get the Kuwaitis to imprison him for ten years, and save even more. Ten years in an Arab prison amongst his co-religionists would teach him that he’d have done much better to have recognised when he was well-off….
sidney penny says
“But both say they firmly believe their son’s history of mental illness and drug addiction made him vulnerable to manipulation — first by ISIS recruiters, and then by the intelligence agents who were tracking him.”
Manipulation and or entrapment.
How much manipulation do you need to kill someone?
How much entrapment do you need to kill someone?
If you did not have that intent then you will not be manipulated or entrapped by anyone.
gravenimage says
Yes–Robert Spencer has often asked what it would take for a decent person to want to mass slaughter innocent people, even if they thought they could get away with it.
This is entirely different from, say, offering dirt cheap flat-screen TVs off the back of a truck–something that even good people might reasonably be expected to want.
MFritz says
Absolutely not. This person one is NOT an insane person but a fanatic. And a fanatic is fully responsible for his deeds.
Jayell says
I believe that the sweet old mother of the infamous Kray twins (infamous psychotic East End gangsters) insisted that ‘they were ‘good boys really’ – or something like that. It wouldn’t surprise me to the parents of the hero of this story say something similar; he’d help old ladies across the road – and leave them in the middle if they were Christian.
gravenimage says
+1
infidel says
Games Muslims play,.. the same all over the world.. The parents actually will be feted at their local mosque for giving birth to a Jehaadi.. I will not trust a single word that they spout..they are all so adept in lying right from childhood..
UNCLE VLADDI says
Why call him Canadian?!
He’s no more Canadian than Justin Turdeau is!
ronyvo says
The parents ask mercy for their criminal son who wants to kill innocent people. What about those innocents whom he intended to kill?
NO MERCY for Muslims, especially for those who follow the Koran religiously, they are barbaric criminals we the ‘infidels’ must protect ourselves from them.
ronyvo says
The parents ask for mercy for their criminal son!
What about the innocent people he intended to kill?!!!
NO MERCY for Muslims especially for those who follow the Koran religiously.
Politicianophobia says
The story was on the Canadian, Liberal Broadcasting Corporation, Government owned, propaganda machine. CBC or CTV all the same BS. Poor Muslims, terrible, cruel, racists, Islamophobic Canadians….blah blah blah
Veronika N says
“In a handwritten letter submitted to the court on March 2, El Bahnasawy apologized for his behaviour and asked for a “second chance,” recounting his years of substance abuse, mental health issues and multiple suicide attempts.” One can only ‘hope’ that he will make another successful attempt at “suicide ” and succeed, this time—Allah willing. No big loss, plus he will save the taxpayers money, and this time do the job right.