BEAUMONT, Texas — An Al-Qaeda-trained jihadists who recruited fellow inmates for ISIS while in the Beaumont Federal Prison was sentenced to 25 years in prison Monday.
Mohammed Ibrahim Ahmed, 46, of Ethopia, was convicted for continuing to provide support to terrorist organizations and making a false statement to FBI agents in December 2019.
Ahmed was sentenced to 25 years in prison Oct. 19 by U.S. District Judge Marcia A. Crone. Prosecutors said this additional punishment will be followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
“This terrorist’s original prison sentence did not diminish his support of ISIS or its ugly ideology,” U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Cox said. “Fortunately, his efforts to radicalize and train others to commit acts of violence against civilians were thwarted by the quick actions of our law enforcement partners. Our office is committed to pursuing terrorists wherever they hide, including within our federal prison system.”
According to information presented in court, Ahmed was convicted in the Southern District of New York in 2013 for conspiring to provide support and get paramilitary training from a foreign terrorist organization. He attended an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1996 and was a member of the Brandbergen Mosque network, which gave financial and logistical aid to terrorist groups, the U.S. District Attorney's Office said in a news release.
A federal judge in New York sentenced him to more than 9 years in federal prison and he was transferred to a federal prison in Beaumont to serve his sentence.
From inside the prison, he recruited at least five inmates to join ISIS and convinced them to commit terrorist acts in the U.S. after their release. While in prison, he celebrated the Ariana Grande concert bombing and other acts of terrorism reported by news media, according to the testimony of fellow inmates.
Witnesses testified he told fellow inmates, “They kill kids, we gonna kill kids.”
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Ahmed told the inmates he recruited to travel out of the country to join ISIS or create sleeper cells within the U.S. to plan and execute terror attacks, according to court testimony. He also gave recruits a training manual with information on guerilla warfare, how to select target and how to carry out assassinations.
Ahmed also trained his inmate recruits so they would be in shape for terrorist attacks and discussed a plot to bomb the federal detention center in New York City as revenge for his prosecution.
“As long as terrorists keep offending, the Department will continue to bring them to justice," National Security Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said.
“As terrorists have grown more determined to inflict violence on populations and use any tool or method at their disposal to do so, law enforcement has become more agile in disrupting their plots,” Houston FBI Special Agent Perrye Turner said. “Today's sentence not only demonstrates the persistence terrorists and terrorist organizations have, but also, reinforces the persistence of FBI Houston Agents assigned to the Beaumont Resident Agency to protect the homeland.”