'Not a forum for you to complain': Judge rebukes ISIS backer in explosive sentencing
A Virginia man convicted of financing the Islamic State terror organization launched into an outburst at his sentencing hearing, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, and was met with an irate judge and a sentence to hard time.
Mohammed Chhipa, 35, of Springfield, who emigrated from India as a child, was convicted last year of a cryptocurrency scheme that raised $185,000 for ISIS, per a Justice Department news release in December.
"From at least October 2019 through October 2022, Chhipa collected and sent money to female ISIS members in Syria to benefit ISIS in various ways, including by financing the escape of female ISIS members from prison camps and supporting ISIS fighters," said the release. "Chhipa would raise funds online on various social media accounts. He would receive electronic transfers of funds and travel hundreds of miles to collect funds by hand. He would then convert the money to cryptocurrency and send it to Turkey, where it was smuggled to ISIS members in Syria."
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At sentencing, Chhipa, who was let off with a warning by the FBI in 2019 when first identified as an ISIS sympathizer, tried to vent some of his grievances.
His attorneys tried to introduce him as a remorseful man who understands "he needs help." But when given the chance to speak, he proclaimed the government is "evil and oppressive" and bemoaned what the happened to his wife, Allison Fluke-Ekren, who per the report is "serving two decades in prison for leading an all-female Islamic State battalion that trained women and girls to use rifles and suicide vests."
He added, “I didn’t commit any crime” when reminded by U.S. District Judge David Novak why he was there.
“This is not a forum for you to complain about the United States of America,” Novak said, shutting him down, before sentencing him to 30 years and four months in prison.
The United States has for years sought to root out the leadership and capabilities of ISIS, an extremist splinter group of al-Qaeda that considers itself an Islamic caliphate with dominion over all Muslims; in March, the Trump administration announced the killing of a long-fugitive ISIS leader.