Man who plotted to behead blogger Pamela Geller on behalf of the Islamic State gets thirty years in jail

A man convicted of leading a plot to behead blogger Pamela Geller on behalf of the Islamic State group will serve even longer behind bars after he was sentenced for a second time on Monday and ordered to 30 years in prison, reports The Associated Press.

The man, David Daoud Wright, was originally sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2017 but was ordered to be sentenced again by a different Boston federal court judge after an appeals court last year overturned one of his convictions.

Wright remains convicted of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries and other crimes.

Wright, who is from Everett, just north of Boston, has already served about five years for conspiring to kill Geller, who organized a 2015 Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that year in Garland, Texas, that ended in gunfire, with two Muslim gunmen shot to death by police.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting attack, and one of the two gunmen was revealed to have tweeted allegiance to ISIS, but it remains unclear whether the Texas attack was inspired by ISIS or carried out in response to an order from the group.

The beheading plot against Geller was never carried out.

Days after the shooting, Wright’s uncle, Ussamah Rahim, told Wright in a phone call that he couldn’t wait to attack Geller and decided instead to go after “those boys in blue.” Hours later, Rahim was approached by officers in a Boston parking lot and was fatally shot after he pulled out a knife and moved toward them, officials say.

Prosecutors had once again urged the judge to send Wright away for life, calling him in court documents “extremely dangerous” and “a serious threat to the United States.”

Wright’s lawyers had asked for a sentence of 14 years. They argued that, among other things, the coronavirus pandemic puts his life at risk behind bars. They said Wright “continues to renounce ISIS and radicalism” and “seeks to educate others about the destructiveness of radicalism.”

Gelller, the founder and president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), is known for her campaign against extremist Muslims, which has featured among other things prominent bus ads criticizing Muslim anti-Semitism.

Source: INN