Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen found out the hard way that it’s not a good idea to try and find al Qaeda “friends” on Facebook. On Monday he was sentenced in Los Angeles, California to 13 years in federal prison and 10 years of supervised release for attempting to assist a terrorist organization.
During legal proceedings, U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter said of the 25-year-old, “I simply do not understand how we can rehabilitate his commitment to die for his beliefs,”The Associated Press reported Monday.
In August and October of 2013, Nguyen told an FBI agent who he thought was an al Qaeda recruiter that he would go to Pakistan via Mexico to train with the terrorist organization.
Nguyen’s defense team asserted that he suffers from a personality disorder “on the spectrum of schizophrenia,” and that treatment while in custody has stopped “magical thinking” from inspiring him to jihad, AP reported.
At the time Nguyen was arrested at a Santa Ana bus terminal in 2013 he had a false passport and a hard drive containing almost 200 weapons training videos, according to the U.S. attorney’s office, AP reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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