He Funded Hezbollah. The U.S. Gave Him 155 Years. Then He Walked Free.
After 23 years in prison, the first man convicted under America’s material-support terrorism law was released and deported. Now he has disappeared from public view
A terror attack at Old Dominion University this week has revived a familiar and uncomfortable question about terrorism cases in the United States: how someone previously convicted of supporting a foreign terrorist organization can receive a relatively short sentence, serve even less time, and return to the daily life in the United States without difficulty.
Federal prosecutors had asked for more than twenty years in the Old Dominion case. The judge imposed eleven. The defendant ultimately served about eight years before being released in December 2024.
That outcome has prompted outrage in some national security circles. But there is another case, largely forgotten outside terrorism law specialists and a handful of national security reporters, that illustrates how unpredictable the U.S. sentencing system can be—even when …
