(CMR) Jamaican-born extremist cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, accused of recruiting support for Islamic State group, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in New York on Thursday. He is the first person tried under New York terror laws passed after September 11, 2001.
Abdullah el-Faisal, born Trevor William Forrest, was arrested following an undercover operation during which an officer in New York City posed as a would-be jihadist and started communicating with the cleric, who was living in Jamaica.
El-Faisal, who served prison time in Britain after being convicted of incitement and stirring racial hatred, was arrested in Jamaica in 2017 and extradited to New York City in 2020.
He was sentenced Thursday after a nearly three-month trial in which he was found guilty of five terrorism-related charges.
Prosecutors said Abdullah el-Faisal believed every word in a speech by Osama bin Laden was “like a gem” and thought images of the coffins of US service members were laughable. He was also described as “one of the most influential English-speaking terrorists of our time.”
Faisal was born to Christian parents but converted to Muslim while spending time in England in the late 1990s. He became an imam at a London mosque, giving fiery speeches on Islam. His charisma, coupled with his command of English, attracted hundreds of people to his sermons.
Federal officials have said el-Faisal’s sermons influenced people such as Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a bomb in Times Square in 2010, and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber who attempted to blow up a transatlantic flight on Christmas Day 2009.
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