Move FM Global News

SAINT PAUL, Minnesota: Federal prosecutors have recommended 12 years in prison for Abelhamid Al-Madioum, a man who once fought for the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria but now expresses remorse in recognition of both the seriousness of his crime and the assistance he provided to authorities in the U.S. and other countries.

Attorneys for Al-Madioum, 27 and a naturalized U.S. citizen, said that seven years is enough, and he no longer believed in the group’s extremist ideology.

In 2014, Al-Madioum was 18 when he joined IS as a college student. He slipped away from his family on a visit to their native Morocco in 2015 and traveled to Syria, where he became a soldier for IS, also known as ISIS.

He was no longer able to fight after being injured in an explosion in Iraq, so he used his computer skills to further serve the group before surrendering to U.S.-backed rebels in 2019.

He was subsequently imprisoned under harsh conditions.

Al-Madioum returned to the U.S. in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization. He had since been cooperating with U.S. authorities and allied governments.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery, who will sentence him, Al-Madioum wrote, “The person who left was young, ignorant, and misguided. I joined a death cult, and it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Acknowledging that Al-Madioum had provided useful assistance to U.S. authorities in several national security investigations and prosecutions, prosecutors said they considered his cooperation into their recommended sentence of 12 years instead of the statutory maximum of 20 years.

“The defendant did much more than harbor extremist beliefs. He chose violent action by taking up arms for ISIS,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

Al-Madioum was among several Minnesota residents suspected of leaving the U.S. to join IS.