What could possibly go wrong? After all, he apologized!
“UH engineering student who tried to join ISIS in Syria sentenced to 18 months in federal prison,” by Gabrielle Banks, Houston Chronicle, June 25, 2018 (thanks to Creeping Sharia):
A college student from Spring who got cold feet en route to joining ISIS fighters in Syria was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison by a federal judge who warned him against following “impulses” in a search for “easy answers.”
In a sharp departure from the federal sentencing guidelines, U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes ordered Asher Abid Khan, 23, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Houston, to prison followed by five years of supervision after deciding he had shown potential for rehabilitation.
With three rows of his family and friends looking on in the courtroom, Khan apologized to the sobbing mother and other relatives of Sixto Ramiro Garcia, a former Klein Oak High School classmate who was killed in Syria after joining the jihadists….
The sentence surprised federal authorities, who had recommended more than 20 years in prison and a lifetime of supervision.
“It’s a significant departure from what probation originally determined his sentence should be, which was over 20 years,” said Ted Imperato, deputy chief of the national security section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston….