Doctor sentenced to 18 years’ jail in US for trying to join Islamic State group

MINNESOTA – A doctor from Pakistan who said he wanted to “fight on the front line” for the Islamic State group was sentenced on Friday to 18 years in a US prison, federal prosecutors said.

The doctor, Muhammad Masood, 31, of Rochester, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in 2022 in the US District Court in St Paul, Minnesota, to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organisation.

Prosecutors said Masood had expressed a desire to government informants to conduct “lone-wolf attacks” in the United States or fight and work as a combat medic for the Islamic State group in the Middle East.

His prison term will be followed by five years of supervised release under the sentence handed down by Judge Paul Magnuson of the US District Court.

Masood, who worked at a research clinic in Rochester, was arrested in March 2020 at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport before he could board a flight to Los Angeles, where he planned to board a cargo ship to travel to the Middle East and join the terrorist organisation, prosecutors said.

In a phone interview on Friday, Masood’s lawyer, Mr Jordan Kushner, called the sentence “extremely harsh”, given his client’s history of mental illness.

In court, Mr Kushner alluded to a report from a psychiatrist who concluded that Masood’s actions should be understood “not as an act of devotion to violent extremism and the aims of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), but as a consequence of his mental illness and multiple stressors”.

But prosecutors had asked the judge to impose the maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, saying in court papers that Masood “chose a path to become a soldier and combat medic for a terrorist organisation” despite having a successful career.

The investigation began in January 2020 when the authorities learnt that Masood had sought help on an encrypted social media platform on “making hijra”, prosecutors said.

The term is commonly used in Islamic State group circles to indicate travel to territories controlled by the group for the purpose of “violent jihad”, according to an affidavit prepared by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Masood had been living in the US on an H-1B visa since 2018, and held a medical licence in his native Pakistan.

On the encrypted platform, he connected with two government informants he believed to be Islamic State group members who would help him join the organisation, prosecutors said.

In conversations with the informants, he expressed being “sick” of living in the US and mused about carrying out lone-wolf terrorist attacks, according to the affidavit.

Ultimately, Masood said he belonged on the front line, where he could be “a combat medic…and also fight”, according to the affidavit.

He initially devised a plan to reach Syria by flying from Chicago to Jordan in March 2020, but that was upended when the coronavirus pandemic prompted Jordan to close its borders, prosecutors said.

Instead, he purchased a ticket for a flight from Minnesota to Los Angeles, the authorities said. On March 19, 2020, he was arrested by federal agents at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport. NYTIMES