(Jewish Journal) Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called for a more lenient sentence for nine Somalian men in Minnesota who were convicted of attempting to join ISIS in November 2016.
Omar, then a Minnesota assemblymember-elect, wrote in a letter to the judge presiding [over] the case, Michael Davis, about “the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison.”
“Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion,” Omar wrote. “Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: ‘Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.’”
