Pakistani doctor who sought to support Isis gets 18 years in US prison
- Muhammad Masood pleaded guilty a year ago in Minnesota to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation
- Prosecutors also said the former Mayo Clinic researcher expressed a desire to carry out ‘lone wolf’ attacks in the US
Muhammad Masood, 31, pleaded guilty a year ago to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation.
But Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents arrested him at Minneapolis airport on March 19, 2020, after he checked in for his flight.
US District Judge Paul Magnuson handed down his sentence on Friday in St Paul.
Prosecutors said Masood was in the US on a work visa. They alleged that starting in January 2020, he made several statements to paid informants - whom he believed were Isis members - pledging his allegiance to the group and its leader.
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Prosecutors also said he expressed a desire to carry out “lone wolf” attacks in the US.
An FBI affidavit said agents began investigating in 2020 after learning that someone, later determined to be Masood, had posted messages on an encrypted social media platform indicating an intent to support Isis.
Masood contacted one of the informants on the platform and said he was a medical doctor with a Pakistani passport and wanted to travel to Syria, Iraq or northern Iran near Afghanistan “to fight on the front line as well as help the wounded brothers”, the document said.
The Mayo Clinic has confirmed that Masood formerly worked at its medical centre in the southeastern Minnesota city of Rochester but said he was not employed there when he was arrested.
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Isis took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, and it drew fighters from across the world.
Minnesota has been a recruiting ground for terrorist groups. Roughly three dozen Minnesotans, mostly men from the state’s large Somali community, have left since 2007 to join al-Shabab – al-Qaeda’s affiliate in East Africa, which still controls parts of rural Somalia – or militant groups in Syria including Isis.
Several others have been convicted on terrorism-related charges for plotting to join or provide support to those groups.
