Mahdi Hashi, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Hashi, 26, had traveled from Britain to his native Somalia to join the Somali group that the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2008, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
“This defendant left his family and his adopted home in the United Kingdom behind so he could offer himself in support of al-Shabaab, a violent terrorist organization that has demonstrated its capabilities and motives in numerous terrorist attacks and that has publicly called for attacks against the United States,” said Robert Capers, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Al-Shabaab wants to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state, according to the experts. The group has been blamed for attacks in Somalia that have killed international aid workers, journalists, civilian leaders and African Union peacekeepers. It also has a history of striking abroad.
In Somalia, Hashi was affiliated with American jihadist Omar Hamami, his band of American fighters, and others associated with Al-Shabaab’s suicide bomber program, according to federal prosecutors.
Hamami, who built a following in militant circles in the West for his idiosyncratic jihadist rap videos and had a U.S. bounty on his head, was among two notable jihadists reportedly killed in Somalia in 2013.
Capers said the prison term “sounds a warning to others who offer support to terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States and our allies around the world.”
Between December 2009 and August 2012, Hashi conspired to support the group before he was apprehended by local authorities in East Africa, according to the statement. He was deported to New York for prosecution in November 2012.
Hashi and two co-defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in may 2015, according to federal prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors said Hashi was among the foreign fighters recruited by Al-Shabaab to have lived, trained and fought alongside other native Somali fighters.
The foreigners became the face of Al-Shabaab’s fundraising and propaganda efforts and were more easily able to cross international borders to carry out terror operations, according to the statement.
Hashi moved to Britain with his family as a 6-year-old, fleeing the civil war in Somalia, his father told CNN in 2013. He grew up in London.
When he turned 16, Britain’s MI5 secret service asked Hashi to become a spy, willingly or not, according to his father, Mohamad Hashi.
Mahdi Hashi filed an official complaint and his local lawmaker met with MI5 representatives. But the younger Hashi returned to Somalia when the pressure persisted, according to his family. “He was being harassed all the time,” his father told CNN.
Mahdi Hashi traveled to Egypt and Syria as a teenager. Then, in 2010, his family said, Hashi returned to Mogadishu. He got married and had a child.
Hashi’s British citizenship was stripped from him shortly before he was put on a plane to the United States in 2012.