New Jersey Man Gets 15 Years For Conspiring To Aid ISIS
NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A former office-supply store supervisor who pleaded guilty to conspiracy for helping his brother travel to the Middle East to join the Islamic State group was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison by a judge who denied his attorney's request for a lighter sentence.
Alaa Saadeh was charged last year and pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to aid a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
The 24-year-old West New York resident, a former supervisor at a Staples store, planned to travel overseas to join the Islamic State group and allowed his brother to buy a plane ticket with Saadeh's credit card to fly there to join the organization, federal prosecutors said. The government also alleged Saadeh sought to erase evidence of his brother's trip by tampering with a cellphone, and counseled an associate to lie to the FBI if questioned.
"You just play stupid," Saadeh said, according to the complaint. "Like you just really don't know. That all you know is that he was going to see his parents."
The 15-year sentence was the maximum allowable under Saadeh's plea agreement.
In a brief statement to the court Tuesday, Saadeh apologized and said he "felt horrible'' about his actions. He said he regretted not exerting more influence over his younger brother, whom prosecutors said was the more militant of the two.
"I feel I could have taken so many different routes concerning this situation,'' said Saadeh, shackled and clad in a prison jumpsuit. "I could have done more for my brother. It saddens me that I had any part in even a little of this.''
U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton viewed Saadeh's apology with skepticism, saying that while Saadeh is a "very intelligent young man,'' it was disconcerting that he took no action to stop the plan while it was in progress.
Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Judson Welle told Wigenton that as the oldest person in the group of alleged conspirators, Saadeh had "the responsibility to be the adult in the room. The defendant let his apartment be used as a hotbed of radicalization. That's where the conspiracy really took root.''
The brother, Nader Saadeh, and another conspirator, Samuel Rahamin Topaz, pleaded guilty and are scheduled to be sentenced in the fall. Two other co-defendants are awaiting trial.
At Nader Saadeh's plea hearing in December, he acknowledged a co-defendant showed him diagrams for making bombs and discussed plans to use them in Times Square, the World Trade Center and Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens.
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