The Inquisitr is reporting the capture of American ISIS fighter Muhammad Jamal Amin, who apparently traveled from the United States to join the terrorist group before fleeing.
The 27-year-old man the media is calling “American ISIS” has reportedly been very apologetic about joining, saying that he was missing his family and Western culture due to the terrorist group’s extremist views that would not allow him the luxury of doing things like smoking.
This is curious to me, however, because while it’s said they’ve established very strict laws, there have been plenty of reported incidents where they’ve been able to break their own laws if they want to, which might have something to do with rank.
During the first year that they seized Iraqi territory, there were unconfirmed reports that they had even brewed their own beer.
But it almost seems as if he’s hoping that by apologizing, the punishment will be less.
We only need to look back 16 years to a former American ISIS who we labeled then as “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, who is still sitting in a federal correctional institution at Terre Haute, Indiana, and not in Guantanamo Bay, and is due to be released in 2019.
Which is interesting for a variety of reasons, the main one being the leniency of his sentence.
Certainly at the time of his capture, he was the first of his kind ever to be captured in battle, and in comparison with the other enemy combatants who are not white, he’s received more slack, especially when lawmakers have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent enemy combatants from being held in American prisons.
#US : Prisoners released from #Guantanamo Bay suspected of returning to #extremism https://t.co/wKFaA7moot #Islam pic.twitter.com/R8nqdXkktb
— Al Bawaba News (@AlBawabaEnglish) March 8, 2016
It would be interesting to see if the newly-labeled American ISIS will get the same leniency or what his fight through the criminal justice system is going to look like.
Even more, the disciplinary action against this American ISIS will not be lenient at all, and lawmakers will likely go for the death penalty.
Recently, the Inquisitr wrote about the crossroads of capital punishment where the exoneration of death row inmates have caused some American lawmakers to re-examine the death penalty .
Certainly, the authorities will do everything they can, perhaps within the law, to find out what he knows before handing him the most extreme sentence.
But if we were to look at this situation differently and consider leniency, he would already be known to have committed a crime publicly and be forced to live his life under rehabilitation and perhaps be stigmatized.
Although 27 is a lot older than Lindh was when he was captured, the 20-year sentence makes sense, as he was too young to know what he had done. Of course, American ISIS is certainly old enough to know better.
However, it could be that he never commits a crime again and turns his life around. But thinking he has that chance is a long shot, because in that already mentioned Inquisitr article, capital punishment is still largely favored by most Americans.
And even if there were a chance, the point is to make an example of American ISIS with the harshest sentence. The sentence that’s awaiting American ISIS would perhaps be much worse than if he had just joined and been killed on the battlefield.
As a matter of fact, his sentence could already start now, given that I’m referring to him as American ISIS rather than to use his real name. And as far as any sentiment from the American public, being dismissive by calling him American ISIS is a good start.
[Photo by AP, File]
