St. Louis Park man sentenced to 10 years in prison for joining ISIS and fighting overseas

A sleeve of Abdelhamid Al-Madioum's orange sweatshirt hung where his right arm once was as he entered a federal courtroom in Minneapolis on Thursday, ten years older than he was when he began to devour the terrorist propaganda that led him to Syria.

Led by a U.S. Marshal, the 27-year-old St. Louis Park man took only two steps before freezing in place and smiling. At the back of the courtroom sat his parents and two young sons, born in the middle of the war and brought to the United States last month.

“The most precious babies,” Al-Madioum told his lawyer before a federal judge gave him a 10-year prison sentence for joining and fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) .

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery told Al-Madioum that his case was “extraordinary in many ways.” Between his considerable assistance in terrorist investigations around the world since his surrender in 2019, to the government he “abandoned and sabotaged” by coming to his aid, and the incredible return of his young boys to safety.

Thursday's sentencing marks the latest chapter in one of the nation's rarest terrorist recruitment cases: Of the nearly 300 Americans who traveled to join ISIS abroad, Al-Madioum was among just a few. dozen to have survived and been returned to the United States for trial.

Al-Madioum's 7-year-old son and 9-year-old stepson wore dress shirts tucked neatly into their pants as they rocked back and forth on the wooden bench in the bathroom. audience and smiled at their father. They are now being raised by Al-Madioum's parents and arrived in the country just a month after the US State Department picked them up from a camp in Syria. Their mother was shot dead in front of the family as Syrian forces closed in on ISIS territory in 2019 and buried in a trench that Al-Madioum had dug to try to protect them from airstrikes.

“I know I put you through so much,” Al-Madioum told his family on Thursday. “I did it with the conviction that it was my religious duty. This is no excuse: my first duty should have been to you.”

He told his parents that the two boys were “the only good thing I've given you in a decade.”

The Star Tribune first reported that Al-Madioum joined ISIS in 2017. Born in Morocco but raised in St. Louis Park, Al-Madioum “self-radicalized” when, while he was an engineering student at Normandale Community College, he connected online with an ISIS. recruiter who helped him plan his trip to the group. Early one morning in 2015, he sneaked out of his family's vacation home in Morocco to board a flight to Turkey. With the help of ISIS operatives, he crossed the border into Syria and enlisted.

Manny Atwal, Al-Madioum's lawyer, said he had spent 50 days as a soldier before an explosion required the amputation of his right arm and caused lasting mental and physical trauma that may also require the removal of a leg. Al-Madioum also served as an ISIS administrator for six months, helping maintain a database of records on its soldiers.

Atwal said Al-Madioum should receive about half – 63 months – of his sentence, which includes 18 months in harsh conditions in a Syrian prison. The U.S. government brought Al-Madioum back in 2020 for prosecution, and he quickly pleaded guilty and began assisting the government with terrorism investigations. That included testimony against a Michigan man who served in the same ISIS battalion. After being convicted of supporting a designated terrorist group, Ibraheem Izzy Musaibli was sentenced last year to 14 years in prison.

Montgomery's sentence falls in the middle of the seven-year sentence requested by Atwal and the 12-year sentence sought by prosecutors. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter acknowledged that Al-Madioum had provided “substantial assistance” since his arrest, but said he still deserved consequences for joining one of the most serious terrorist organizations. notorious in the world.

“It is the will of this defendant and defendants like him around the world… that has allowed ISIS to thrive, proliferate and inflict all the evils for which it is now so well known.” , Winter told Montgomery.

Al-Madioum insisted Thursday that none of his cooperation with the government had been transactional, and neither Winter nor Montgomery doubted his sincerity.

“I do it for a moral reason because it is the right thing to do to protect innocent lives,” he said. “I owe it to the nation that gave me everything.”

Atwal referenced sealed letters of support sent to Montgomery, including one from an incarcerated U.S. military veteran who befriended Al-Madioum and another from the former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and secretary general United Nations deputy in Afghanistan who helped find and recover Al-Madioum. Madioum's sons from an orphanage camp.

Peter Galbraith, the diplomat who was deeply involved in negotiations over the return of children born under ISIS control, told the Star Tribune in April that Al-Madioum's case “is the only case where anyone “One who fought with ISIS survived and, from prison, was able to reunite with his children.”

Montgomery also alluded to a sealed government file that describes Al-Madioum as “almost” completely cooperative. The question appears to be whether another of Al-Madioum's wives – from whom he says he was separated while living under IS – was still alive. Al-Madioum had two daughters with the woman and Atwal said he offered to communicate with her if she was alive.

“He only does this if there is a chance his two daughters are alive,” she said. “He's not trying to hide or pledge allegiance to ISIS. It's just because she's the mother of his daughters.”

Al-Madioum told the court that after five years of chaos and anarchy, “I really see the value of our institutions.” He said that no one in the government treated him with “anything other than dignity and respect” and that it was for this reason that “I completely changed my mind about leaving Damascus.”

Atwal said Al-Madioum “did not discuss the full trauma he witnessed.” Al-Madioum becomes physically ill when discussing his time in IS territory, he said, and Atwal warned that he would need extensive therapy.

Montgomery said she would recommend that the Bureau of Prisons house Al-Madioum at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, citing his significant physical and mental health needs.

“I have no doubt that the rest of your life will be much more comfortable,” Montgomery said, before warning that “it won’t be a smooth sidewalk.”

“These boys need you,” she said. “I’m confident you’ll make it.”

“I will, your honor,” he replied.