A Virginia man who talked about his desire to carry out beheadings for the Islamic State was sentenced on Friday to more than eight years in prison after getting caught in an FBI sting in the last year trying to help the group.
Haris Qamar, aged 26, is one of among the half a dozen men from the northern Virginia area charged in the last few years with helping the Islamic State or attempting to do so. Like so many of the cases, Qamar also left the judge flummoxed as to why he was drawn to the violent ideology of the Islamic State, which has conducted beheadings and also burned its captives alive.
When asked to explain himself at a sentencing hearing, Qamar said that he felt compelled to respond to the videos and news accounts he saw online showing innocent Muslims, including women and children, being slaughtered in the Syria and Middle East.
The judge, Leonie Brinkema, asked why he showed no sympathy for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in the Paris in the year 2015, after which Qamar tweeted out a prayer for the similar attacks.
“It was kind of like payback, an eye-for-an-eye thing,” said Qamar, who has renounced his support of the Islamic State and also apologized for his actions.
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Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg acknowledged that Qamar, a Brooklyn native, is a likable personality. But he said that Qamar is also a guy who talked excitedly about his desire to drink the “Slurpees out of their blood.”
“I met him. He is a nice guy,” Kromberg said. “But there’s another side of Kromberg also said that Qamar’s support of the Islamic State was not a brief flirtation. In the year 2014, before he was ever on the FBI’s radar, he bought the plane ticket to Turkey with the intention of joining the Islamic State. He never took the trip because his parents prevented him from doing so.
Then, in 2015 and 2016, he used variations of the handle “New Era JihadI” on the social media to promote Islamic State propaganda. His accounts were shut down roughly by 100 times, but he would just open the new ones.
It was Qamar’s social media use that brought him to the attention of the FBI. An informant convinced Qamar to buy Google gift cards in the amounts and transfer the codes to a person Qamar believed was a representative of the Islamic State. In June, Qamar took photographs of the in the D.C. area for what he thought would be an Islamic State video showing the landmarks as the potential targets.
His sentence fell between the term of five to six years sought by the Qamar’s attorney, and also 20-year maximum recommended under the federal sentencing guidelines.
By Mrudula Duddempudi.
