(Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) Mustafa Mousab Alowemer told a federal judge Tuesday that coming to the United States in 2016 from war-torn Syria where he witnessed dozens, if not hundreds, of atrocities as a child made him “feel like a human being, safe, conflict-free and peaceful.”
It was a place that should have been full of opportunity.
And it was — at least for a short time.
Alowemer, who was 18 at the time, settled with his family in Pittsburgh. He enrolled at Brashear High School and was able to complete four years of required classes in three years. He was accepted into community college and wanted to study engineering.
But it was during his senior year of high school as he was preparing to graduate that he also was plotting to bomb a church on Pittsburgh’s North Side in the name of ISIS.
