TerrorismMaryland teen pleads guilty in plot to support Irish terror cell
A Maryland teen, who had won a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University, pleads guilty to being part of a plot, hatched by “Jihad Jane” from Pennsylvania, to launch a Jihad in European
Mohammad Hassan Khalid had won a scholarship to the prestigious Johns Hopkins University and faced a bright future when the FBI arrested him last summer at the age of seventeen, making him the rare juvenile in federal custody.
Last Friday, Khalid, entered a guilty plea to terrorism charges for helping an American woman, Colleen LaRose, better known as “Jihad Jane,” to support an Irish-based terror cell that planned jihad in Europe.
Khalid, now eighteen, faces up to fifteen years in prison on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
He met Colleen Rose in a chat room when he was fifteen, and began corresponding with her. LaRose, who named herself Jihad Jane, faces life in prison after admitting she plotted to kill a Swedish artist who had depicted the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.
In a secret online life, the high school honors student had agreed to raise money and recruit terrorists. Prosecutors said that Khalid once received a parcel from LaRose, removed a passport from it, and forwarded the other items on to his co-conspirators. He said that he wanted to deliver the passport himself.
According to the Washington Post, Khalid sought assurance that Jihad Jane’s “’brothers’ were real jihadists,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams. The government recovered extensive communication between the parties, Williams added.
Messages that were sent in July 2009, detail co-defendant Ali Charaf Damache as telling Khalid that his group would be a “professional, organized team” that would be trained by al Qaeda in the Magreb, or the Islamic State of Iraq.
Khalid received instructions from Damache to recruit men and women with passports that would be able to travel in Europe. Khalid then sent out one questionnaire that he forwarded to LaRose.
Khalid and his family are legal immigrants from Pakistan, and while his family members have become naturalized U.S. citizens, Khalid had chosen not. He likely faces deportation after his prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker advised him.
