According to the Huffington Post, the sentencing for Muhammad Hassan Khalid, the honors student from Ellicott City, MD, a suburb of Baltimore, was postponed in court proceedings on Tuesday, 1/5/2014:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former high school honors student who led a double life online, aiding Muslim extremists overseas, has helped the U.S. pursue terrorists since his 2011 arrest but remains a risk, federal prosecutors said in court filings. Mohammad Hassan Khalid, 20, of suburban Baltimore, was expected to be sentenced Tuesday in Philadelphia, but his hearing was postponed while the defense seeks further mental-health evaluations. He is the rare person ever detained as a juvenile on federal terrorism charges. (Read more).
Reports about Khalid indicate that he was an honors student at suburban, Ellicott City, MD, ranked in the top ten places to live in America by Money Magazine. The Huffington Post article stated:
“He [Khalid] appeared to be a polite and studious 15-year-old whose parents moved to the United States from Pakistan to give him a better life. However, in the anonymous world of online communications, Khalid was … translating extremist online postings and organizing a terrorist cell,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said in the memo filed last week.
Khalid’s attorney appeared to be making a case that the United States government should have done more to ensure that Khalid was “reformed”; apparently, Khalid was not placed in a juvenile facility when he was arrested at age 17. Having been placed in an adult facility, Khalid’s attorney appeared to make the case that the failure of Khalid to be reformed is the government’s fault. Khalid continued to assist in Islamist efforts after the FBI intervened:
The memo reveals that Khalid continued aiding his contacts even after the FBI tried to intervene in the spring of 2010. Khalid, who had earned a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University before his senior year arrest, “simply obtained a new computer, hacked into someone else’s internet connection, and started up his jihadi activity once again,” the government memo said.
It seems that the call of Islam is a very strong call upon the human heart. Hassan Khalid, a scholar student at prestigious Johns Hopkins University is actually a jihadist at age 17. Not quite the profile for an Islamist. I thought they were supposed to be misguided, poor, uneducated, and disillusioned people filled with hatred about the United States, the Great Satan.
Jesus come quickly.
Blessings.(Please share on your Facebook, particularly if you have kids in high school.)
Jack
