A young ISIS wannabe who spread extremist propaganda and plotted an aborted stabbing attack in Queens was sentenced to nine years behind bars, after he denounced the terrorist group in an emotional statement to a judge Tuesday.
Awais Chudhary, 25, has already served six of those nine years in the MDC Brooklyn jail while awaiting trial after his 2019 arrest.
Chudhary, who’s autistic, said he want to protect his sisters from an abusive household, and he realized later that he was pulled down a rabbit hole of ISIS propaganda designed to exploit his vulnerability.
“I want to be clear that I don’t support ISIS,” he said. “ISIS presented itself as protectors of the weak and vulnerable … and I wanted to be like that.”
He added, “I was just really crying out for help. I was looking in the wrong places … I’m deeply sorry that I didn’t have the strength and maturity to pull away from the messages of ISIS.”
Chudhary was a teenager when he started collecting ISIS propaganda and created an online video called “how to get the files,” showing others how to find propaganda and use internet privacy tools while searching for them, according to prosecutors. He helped another convicted ISIS supporter find potential English-speaking recruits and edit propaganda, the feds said.
And in August 2019, he started communicating with someone on the messaging app Telegram to plot a knife attack, never realizing that his new friend was actually two undercover federal agents using the Telegram account as a sting operation.
Chudhary got as far as doing recon at the pedestrian bridges over the Grand Central Parkway and the Flushing Bay Promenade, and ordering a tactical knife and other gear from Amazon, but the feds were watching the entire time.
Chudhary also asked the undercover how to make a “bucket bomb” that he could throw over the walkway fence onto the cars below.
He pleaded guilty in June to attempting to provide material support to ISIS, a charge that carries a maximum 20-year sentence, though federal guidelines put his appropriate sentence at eight to 12 years.
His lawyer, Samuel Jacobson of the Federal Defenders, who asked for eight years, said that Chudhary turned to religion and extremism because he was living in a “house of horrors” run by his uncle and was searching for reason.
Jacobson suggested that Chudhary’s life may have turned out differently if the FBI “knocked on his door” instead of pulling him into a sting operation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Sise pushed back on that argument, saying, “It’s frankly alarming to the government that the defendant continues to blame the FBI for his conduct.”
Sise also suggested that the obsession associated with his autism could make him “more dangerous, not less.”
Chudhary’s lawyers said that since being diagnosed, he’s developed coping and self-regulating strategies that he previously didn’t know he needed.
Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon also rejected any argument the FBI was to blame, but said she felt Chudhary’s disavowal of ISIS appeared genuine.
“I have considered the mental health issues that he has documented here before the court,” she said. “I’ve considered it very carefully.”
Amon also sentenced Chudhary to 15 years of supervised release after he’s done with his prison sentence.
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