US teen sentenced to 11 years for IS group support
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| 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin posted more than 7,000 Twitter messages in support of the Islamic State group |
Ali Shukri Amin, 17, from the small town of Manassas an hour's drive from Washington DC, will be subject to a lifetime of supervised release and monitoring of his Internet activities.
The prolific Twitter user, who sent more than 7,000 messages on the site in support of the IS group, pleaded guilty in June.
Under the Twitter handle @Amreekiwitness, he provided IS group supporters with instructions on using the virtual currency Bitcoin to conceal financial donations to the radical Islamist group and the best way to encrypt their online exchanges.
He also offered guidance to sympathisers seeking to travel to Syria to fight with the IS group, including another Virginia teen, Reza Niknejad, who traveled to Syria in January.
Niknejad, 18, was charged in June with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to provide material support to the IS group and conspiring to kill and injure people abroad.
The prosecution had called on the judge to hand Amin the maximum sentence of 15 years, while his defence had argued for just six years.
US has ‘terrible record’ on juvenile incarceration
The judge said he had taken into account Amin’s young age and lack of a criminal record during sentencing, the New York Times reported.
Nevertheless, the case is likely to draw attention to the trial of young people as adults in the US, where an estimated 250,000 youth are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults every year.
“Unfortunately, the United States has a terrible record of treating juveniles as if they were adults and sentencing them extremely harshly,” Alison Parker, an attorney and co-director of Human Rights Watch’s US programme, told FRANCE 24.
“Children – even those as young as 13 or 14 – can be sentenced to die in prison for homicide offenses; and on a daily basis in states like Florida children are tried as adults and face long sentences like 15 years for stealing cars or property in which no one gets hurt.”
Amin's lawyer, Joseph Flood, had described his client as a stellar student from a good family who was outraged by rights abuses under Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
When Amin pleaded guilty, Flood said he was the first minor convicted in the United States of providing material aid to the IS group.
US prosecutors welcomed the sentence.
Assistant attorney general John Carlin said "more and more" IS group propaganda is seeping into American communities "reaching those who are most vulnerable".
"The Department of Justice will continue to use all tools to disrupt the threats that ISIL poses," he said, using an alternative acronym for the group.
Those who use social media to support the IS group would be "prosecuted with no less vigilance" than those who take up arms for the militants, said US attorney Dana Boente.
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