Woman who aided the Islamic State terrorist group skips hearing as the authorities fear she cut the GPS bracelet

A Brooklyn woman who will be resentenced for supporting Islamic State after a court threw out her “shockingly low” four-year prison term did not attend a Wednesday court hearing, and a prosecutor suggested she may have cut her monitoring bracelet.

U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn said she will issue a bench warrant for Sinmyah Amera Ceasar, 26, who prosecutors have said used the name “Umm Nutella” in her role as a “committed recruiter” for Islamic State.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Richardson said Ceasar was not responding to calls and the government believed her GPS tracking bracket had been “tampered with” and perhaps cut. He said the FBI and probation officials are looking for it.

Samuel Jacobson, a federal public defender representing Ceasar, said he believed his client knew she had a court date. “I can’t say for sure that she understood the specifics,” he said.

Ceasar received her four-year term from late U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, who cited her need for educational and mental health support after a lifetime of abuse.

But the federal appeals court in Manhattan threw out the sentence on Aug. 18, saying it was too short relative to “similar terrorism crimes” and failed to properly address the needs to ensure just punishment.

Prosecutors want Ceasar detained, saying she is a flight risk and danger to the community, and has repeatedly violated probation conditions since being freed from prison in July 2020 after being sentenced about a year earlier. She had received credit for time served.

Matsumoto said she was “concerned that additional violations … have occurred as recently as July.”

Ceasar was arrested in November 2016 at New York’s Kennedy Airport while preparing to leave the country. She began cooperating with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Source: Canoe