Sentencing for a 27-year-old St. Louis Park man who joined ISIS was called off barely two hours before he was due in a Minneapolis federal courtroom on Wednesday.
The development further delays sentencing for Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, who has remained in federal custody in Sherburne County Jail since the U.S. government transferred him from a Syrian prison in 2020. Al-Madioum quickly pleaded guilty to terrorism support charges in 2021 but has yet to be sentenced while he has helped the U.S. Justice Department in terrorism recruitment investigations around the country.
No reason was publicly stated for Wednesday's cancellation. A notice from the court only states that Al-Madioum's sentencing "will be rescheduled for a future date and time to be determined." A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office described the change a "routine" rescheduling.
The Star Tribune first reported Al-Madioum's joining ISIS in 2017, years before the government announced his defection and as his fate remained uncertain. His is among the rarest of cases involving Americans who tried joining ISIS around the mid-2010s. Of the estimated 300 Americans who traveled or tried to join the group abroad, Al-Madioum is among barely a dozen to survive and be sent back to the U.S. to face charges.
Al-Madioum became "self-radicalized" in 2014 when, as an engineering student at Normandale Community College, he connected online with an ISIS recruiter who helped him plan his travel to the group. Al-Madioum left his family behind while on a summer 2015 vacation to visit relatives and loved ones in Morocco.
Federal prosecutors are asking Montgomery to sentence Al-Madioum to 12 years in prison, acknowledging that he gave authorities "substantial assistance" since his arrest. This included testimony in federal prosecutions elsewhere of former fellow battalion members. Al-Madioum has described being trained to fight for ISIS, losing an arm to an explosion and later helping the terror organization maintain a database filled with records on fighters and their families.
Manny Atwal, Al-Madioum's attorney, instead wants Al-Madioum to serve seven years in prison. She notes that he has been incarcerated for five years already, including more than a year in harsh conditions in Syria's Hasakah prison. Al-Madioum's wife was killed in front of him and their two young sons before his March 2019 surrender. He has since located the boys, who will soon arrive in Minnesota to be raised by Al-Madioum's parents.
In a letter to Montgomery last month, filed as part of his attorney's arguments for a seven-year prison term, Al-Madioum said he hoped to one day help others avoid falling prey to the same recruitment and manipulation ISIS operatives used to lure him into their ranks.
"I've been changed by life experience: by the treachery I endured as a member of ISIS, by becoming a father of four, a husband, an amputee, a prisoner of war, a malnourished supplicant, by seeing the pain and anguish and gnashing of teeth that terrorism causes, the humiliation, the tears, the shame," Al-Madioum wrote. "I joined a death cult, and it was the biggest mistake of my life."
