Rep. Ilhan Omar Sought Leniency for Men Accused of Trying to Join ISIS
Posted by Mike LaChance
“The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach”
Ilhan Omar, the new Democrat Congresswoman from Minnesota, asked a judge to go easy on nine men on trial in 2016 for allegedly trying to join the ISIS terrorist group. She was a state representative at that time.
FOX 9 News reported in November, 2016:
Rep. Ilhan Omar asks judge for compassion in ISIS recruit sentencing
The 9 Minnesota men charged with planning to join ISIS are scheduled to be sentenced next week. Ahead of those court dates, 13 letters were sent to Judge Michael Davis in the case of defendant Abdirahman Yasin Daud, including a letter from state Rep. Ilhan Omar, who on Election Night became with first elected Somali-American lawmaker in the nation.
Rep. Omar asked Judge Davis for “compassion” and a “restorative approach to justice,” concluding that “this ruling can set a precedent and has the potential to be a landmark case in addressing extremism.”
Daud was one of two young men from the Twin Cities arrested in San Diego in April 2015 in an alleged plot to buy fake passports for travel to Syria. Federal prosecutors requested 30 years in prison for Daud, with a lifetime of supervised release.
Here’s part of Omar’s letter to the judge:
Honorable Judge Davis,
As you undoubtedly deliberate with great caution the sentencing of nine recently convicted Somali-American men, I bring to your attention the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison. Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion. Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: “Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.”
The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach; if we truly want to affect change, we should refocus our efforts on inclusion and rehabilitation. A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty. A restorative approach to justice assesses the lure of criminality and addresses it.
One Twitter user did an experiment with Omar’s letter, via Twitchy:
Fun exercise:
Try reading her letter and imagine that someone wrote this about a group of young white men convicted of trying to attack a mosque.
Some excerpts:
/1 https://t.co/N0PoWVnc1a— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
Remember, we’re imagining the defendants are racist white supremacists:
“these punitive measures… align with the presupposition of recruitment: ‘Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.’” /2— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty.”
Imagine a US Rep saying we’ve “misunderstood” a white terrorist targeting Muslims.
That’s grotesque.
/3— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people — it is the consequences of systematic alienation”
Well… cultural alienation is one of the key complaints of racist white supremacists. /4— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
“The most effective penance is making these men ambassadors of reform.”
Yes yes yes, we should find all the alienated young men who are planning violence and make them ambassadors of reform. /5— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
If I read Rep Omar’s statement and imagine young white terrorists sitting in the chairs, I can feel my temperature rising.
The underlying implication is that these men are oppressed so you can understand why they want to kill people.
That’s exceedingly dangerous /END— PoliMath (@politicalmath) January 25, 2019
It should also be noted that Omar’s desire for compassion seems to have limitations. She was part of the online mob that rushed to condemn the Covington kids.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn reports at FOX News:
Rep. Ilhan Omar deletes tweet attacking Covington students, after backlash
Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has apparently deleted an overnight tweet going after Covington Catholic students anew, after facing a social media backlash for her comments…
She wrote: “The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it’ … They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants … Sandmann’s family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology.”
But after an avalanche of criticism, the tweet had been removed by late morning on Wednesday.
Omar has gained infamy for her anti-Semitic tweet “may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel” infamy and her attack on Mikc Pence’s Christianity.
This hateful woman landed a coveted spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thanks to Nancy Pelosi.
Lovely.