On Friday, August 25, a US court sentenced a Pakistani man named Muhammad Masood to 18 years in prison and subsequent supervised release after he was convicted of attempting to provide material support to the terror outfit Islamic Stae of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS). The Pakistani convict had pleaded guilty on August 16 last year.
According to a press release issued by the US Justice Department, Muhammad Masood (31), a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan had under an H-1B visa worked as a research coordinator at a medical clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Masood worked at the Mayo Clinic previously but was working at a research clinic in Rochester when he was arrested in 2020.
Masood used an encrypted messaging service to enable his travel overseas to join the Islamic terrorist organisation ISIS between January and March 2020. Masood expressed his desire to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) and declared his allegiance or “Bayat” to the proscribed terrorist organisation and its leader in many of his statements.
Muhammad Masood had also expressed his aspiration to carry out ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks in the United States. Reportedly, Masood was also willing to fight and work as a combat medic for the Islamic terrorist outfit in the Middle East.
The inquiry into Masood’s activities began in January 2020, when investigators discovered he had on an encrypted social media network asked for assistance on “making hijra”. According to an affidavit submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the term is often used in Islamic State circles to denote travel to territory controlled by ISIS for the goal of “violent jihad.”
The Pakistani doctor turned Jihadi had planned to reach Syria via the route of Chicago, Illinois, to Amman, Jordan and from there on to Syria. Masood had on February 21, 2020, bought plane tickets accordingly. However, Muhammad Masood had to change his travel plans as Jordan closed its borders for incoming flights in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following this, Masood decided to fly from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to meet with someone he believed could help him go via cargo ship to ISIS territory.
Masood travelled from Rochester to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) on March 19, 2020, to board a plane heading for Los Angeles, California. Masood checked in for his flight at MSP. However, the Pakistani Jihadi was apprehended there by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
He was caught because the persons he was talking to about his plans to join ISIS were actually government informants.
Notably, Masood’s lawyer, Jordan Kushner, claimed that Masood suffered from “mental illness”. Masood’s lawyer told The New York Times on Friday that the sentence was “extremely harsh” considering his client’s history of mental illness.
Kushner, in court, had referred to a psychiatrist’s report, which found that Masood’s acts should be seen “not as an act of devotion to violent extremism and the aims of ISIS, but as a result of his mental illness and multiple stressors.”
