Tairod Pugh convicted

We discussed Tairod Pugh two years ago when he tried to sneak into Syria to join ISIS. He was an airplane mechanic in the Air Force almost thirty years ago before he converted to Islam and decided that his aircraft maintenance skills would be valuable to the ISIS air wing. He wasn’t stealthy enough when he passed through Turkey and the Turks nabbed him and sent him back to Egypt where US authorities began monitoring him. He was convicted last year and sentenced to 35 years in prison yesterday, according to CNN;

“The defendant turned his back on his country, and the military he once served, to attempt to join a brutally violent terrorist organization committed to the slaughter of innocent people throughout the world,” Acting United States Attorney Bridget Rohde said in a statement released on Wednesday.

[…]

Foreign government officials quickly deported Pugh to the United States, where the FBI closely monitored him, relying in part on a covert undercover employee who encountered Pugh at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the Justice Department.

[…]

“I am a Mujahid. I am a sword against the oppressor and a shield for the oppressed. I will use the talents and skills given to me by Allah to establish and defend the Islamic State. There is only 2 possible outcomes for me. Victory or Martyr,” Pugh wrote in the note, prosecutors say.

Apparently there was a third outcome he hadn’t considered – a’moldering in prison.

Category: Terror War