By Thursday, a US court is tasked to decide the applicable penalty for Mohammad Hassan Khalid, who admitted to providing assistance to al Qaeda. Khalid is a high school student who immigrated from Pakistan. Now at 20 years of age, he is the youngest individual to be charged with crimes related to terrorism in the United States, according to a report from Reuters.
Khalid was arrested back in 2011 on criminal charges from his acts of providing material support for terrorists. He was working with a US woman who had become known as 'Jihad Jane'. Amongst the plans the group had was the murder of a known Swedish artist.
'Jihad Jane' was the alias of Colleen LaRose, a suburban housewife from Philadelphia. Back in January, LaRose was convicted of conspiracy to murder Lars Vilks and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Vilks, in one of his more controversial works, depicted the head of the Prophet Mohammad on a dog, thus earning the ire of al Qaeda.
For his part, Khalid had entered into a plea agreement for committing related crimes to terrorism when he was only 15 years of age. He had done the crimes while living in his parent's apartment in a Maryland suburb. He should have received 15 years prison time, but prosecutors sought for a lower penalty in exchange for his cooperation after he was arrested.
The sentence meted would be read to Khalid on Thursday at the US District Court of Maryland.
According to the prosecution, Khalid had tried to raise money for the al Qaeda operatives through online posts. He also helped translate violent jihad videos from Urdu to English. He also worked with two other American men, namely Emerson Begolly and Reed Stanley Berry. Both Begolly and Berry are now serving long prison terms on other terrorism related crimes.
