A naturalized U.S. citizen has been sentenced to a decade behind bars after pledging his allegiance to and fighting on behalf of the terrorist organization ISIS.
Lirim Sylejmani, a 49-year-old foreign national originally from Kosovo, has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to receiving military training from the Islamic State (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization.
Sylejmani, who moved to the United States roughly 25 years ago and settled in Chicago, traveled to Syria in 2015 with his family to join ISIS and took up arms against U.S.-led coalition forces. Prosecutors said he engaged in at least one firefight with American allies and trained extensively with a variety of deadly weapons—including AK-47s, PK machine guns, M-16 rifles, and grenades.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., handed down Sylejmani’s prison sentence, which will be followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
Sylejmani pleaded guilty in December to one count of receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organization.
“This defendant will spend a decade in prison thinking about the betrayal to this country,” wrote the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, also a former Fox News host.
“Anyone thinking that ISIS is the answer to their questions, best think again,” she continued. “We will go to any lengths to root out subversive individuals who want to overthrow the government and harm its citizens.”
Sylejmani and his family traveled from Chicago to Turkey in November 2015 before illegally entering Syria and embedding with ISIS. According to court documents, he received combat training at an ISIS camp alongside other foreign recruits and remained in the war zone until 2019, when he was finally captured by Syrian forces in the terrorist stronghold of Baghouz.
Sylejmani even pledged allegiance (or bayat) to the now-deceased ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, formally aligning himself with a terror group responsible for the deaths of thousands—including Americans—across the Middle East and beyond.
After being held overseas for over a year, he was transferred back to the U.S. in 2020 to face federal charges in Washington, D.C.
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And he only got twelve years?
Deport after serving jail sentence
He should have been tried at Guantanamo Bay, he was a combatant for a foreign terrorist organization therefore it’s a military issue not a civil one.
Why did he only receive a 12 year sentence?
Execute terrorist spy’s.
Why did it take 5 more years to reach this court resolution?
12 years is fine, you betcha. But why not thrown the heck out of our country at the end of his sentence?