Egyptian Student Gets 15 Years in Fla. Terror Case

When two Muslim students were arrested late last year in South Carolina CAIR called it racial and religious profiling. Well the judge has called it terrorism and has sentenced one of them to 15 years in jail.

Egyptian student gets 15 years in Fla. terror case
By MITCH STACY – 7 hours ago

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — An Egyptian student attending a Florida university was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday for making a YouTube video showing would-be terrorists how to turn a remote-control toy into a bomb detonator.

U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday said the public needed to be protected from 27-year-old Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, who made the video "to empower others through his teaching to deliver death, destruction and, at the very least, panic."

Merryday handed the maximum sentence to the former University of South Florida graduate student, brushing aside his attorneys' pleas for leniency and the minimum eight-year sentence.

"This is an intelligent man who made a very bad mistake," one his attorneys, Linda Moreno, said afterward. "This is a sad day."

A. Brian Albritton, U.S. attorney for Florida's middle district, said prosecutors were satisfied that Mohamed got the maximum sentence.

As part of a plea agreement, Mohamed pleaded guilty in June to providing material support to terrorism.

The video was found on a laptop computer in the car he was driving when pulled over near Charleston, S.C., in August 2007. Prosecutor Robert Monk said the 12-minute clip got nearly 800 hits before it was removed from the video-sharing site, but there was no evidence that anyone used it to do harm.

In the video, Mohamed demonstrates how to convert a remote-controlled car from Wal-Mart into a bomb detonator. He speaks in Arabic, saying he wants to teach "martyrdoms" and "suiciders" how to save themselves so they can continue to fight invaders, including U.S. soldiers.

"Instead of the brethren going to, to carry out martyrdom operations, no, may God bless him, he can use the explosion tools from a distance and preserve his life ... for the real battles," he says, according to a translation in the plea agreement.

During the nearly six-hour hearing, Monk painted Mohamed as a radical Muslim who hates America and "embraces a violent and extreme ideology." His attorneys acknowledged that he was a young student with unpopular political views who made a stupid mistake, but noted that he never hurt anyone.

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