(Courthouse News) Mariam Taha Thompson, a 62-year-old contract linguist who worked for the Pentagon, was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison Wednesday for transmitting highly sensitive information to the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.
“Thompson’s sentence reflects the seriousness of her violation of the trust of the American people, of the human sources she jeopardized and of the troops who worked at her side as friends and colleagues,” John Demers, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.
Thompson was working at the department’s Special Operations Task Force facility in Erbil, Iraq, when she met a man on social media in 2017 through a family member. They never met in person, but they maintained an online relationship for two years, chatting over video-chat on a secure text application. Thompson never violated her security clearance during that time.
