ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A former National Guard soldier who admitted traveling to Africa and boarding a truck to join the Islamic State extremist group before ultimately bailing out was sentenced Friday to 11 years in prison.
Mohamed Jalloh, 27, of Sterling, Va., pleaded guilty in October to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year sentence. The defense had asked for a term of less than seven years, saying the man has renounced the Islamic State.
“I’m sorry to the court, to the people and to the U.S. military,” Jalloh said Friday, WRCTV in Washington reported.
Jalloh is one of more than 100 people in the U.S. to be charged with terror offenses connected to the Islamic State since 2014, according to George Washington University’s Extremism Tracker. He is one of seven from the northern Virginia area alone to be charged in the past two years.
In Jalloh’s case, the charges originated from an FBI sting operation. After his arrest, though, Jalloh admitted that he had made his own contact with the group before he had ever been introduced to the FBI informant — contact the government had been unaware of at the time.
“I feel like a complete idiot for accepting such a superficial and dishonest interpretation of Islam,” Jalloh wrote in a letter to the court.