Indian national Yahya Farooq Mohammad has been sentenced to 27 and a half years in prison in the US after pleading guilty to providing thousands of dollars to a slain al-Qaeda leader and soliciting the murder of the judge hearing the case pertaining to the charge.
39-year-old Mohammad was an engineering student at Ohio State University between 2002 and 2004 and married a U.S. citizen in 2008. He and three other defendants – his brother, Ibrahim Mohammad, Asif Ahmed Salim, and Sultane Room Salim – were indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2015.
“As part of his conspiracy, the defendant provided thousands of dollars to Anwar Al-Awlaki in response to his calls to support violent jihad. Once detained, the defendant also solicited the murder of the federal judge presiding over his case. With this prison sentence, he is now being held accountable for his crimes,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Boente.
Mohammad will be deported to India upon completion of his sentence.
He pleaded guilty to conspiring with his co-defendants to travel to Yemen to provide thousands of dollars, equipment, and other assistance to Anwar Al-Awlaki who was later designated as a global terrorist in 2010 and identified as a “key leader” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The US Department of Justice said Mohammad travelled with two associates to Yemen on July 22, 2009, to meet Awlaki and deliver the $22,000 that they had raised. Although they were unable to mee Awlaki, the money was delivered to him via a courier.
The DOJ said Mohammad also admitted to soliciting an undercover FBI operative, posing as a “hitman,” to kidnap and murder U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary. In April 2016 – while the terrorism case against Mohammad was pending and assigned to Judge Zouhary – Mohammad told another inmate in the Lucas County Corrections Center in Toledo, Ohio that he wanted Zouhary kidnapped and murdered and that he was willing to pay $15,000 for this.
The inmate provided Mohammad with the contact information for the undercover employee and stated that he would need a $1,000 down payment before the murder could occur. The inmate also provided Mohammad with an agreed upon code to use when discussing the planned murder over the jail telephone.
The DOJ said Mohammad called the undercover operative on 26th April using the code word. When asked when he wanted the murder committed, he said: “The sooner would be good, you know.”
He then arranged a payment of $1,000 for the undercover FBI employee through a family member, according to court documents.
