American woman who goes under the nom de guerre Umm Nutella and has admitted to help Islamic State in online recruitment, is seeking leniency in her terrorism case over the objections of prosecutors who say she double-crossed them.
Defence attorneys for Sinmyah Amera Caesar argued at a sentencing hearing Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn that she's a lost soul worthy of redemption.
However, burned by Caesar's attempts to secretly get back in touch with Islamic State after signing up as cooperater, prosecutors told US District Judge Jack Weinstein that she's still a terror threat who deserves a severe punishment of at least 30 years behind bars.
Defense attorneys want her sentenced to time served about two years and a lifetime of supervision that would include participating in a rehab program.
The hearing that decides the fate of the 24-year-old will take place on Wednesday.
Caesar, 24, a Brooklyn resident "was a committed recruiter and self-described 'assistant' to the terrorist group, connecting ISIS supporters in the United States to ISIS facilitators and operatives abroad," the government wrote in court papers.
Caesar deleted about 1,000 Facebook messages she had posted to help ISIS recruiters, in an effort to cover her tracks, the papers say. She was also advocating violent jihad Facebook posts, including one written in Arabic from February 2016 that read, "Let's go . . . let's go like the soldiers."
Caesar, a school dropout, whose father abused her, also reached out to ISIS sympathisers. She was found to be providing them contact information for recruiters who could help them travel overseas or direct them about how to conduct attacks on US.
In 2016, she was intercepted at Kennedy airport, New York from where she was trying to flee the country. Caeser has pleaded guilty of providing material support to the Islamic Group. She has also offered information of her IS contacts to the FBI.
She is now back in jail and "has shown no contrition, taken no responsibility for her conduct and failed to separate herself from the extremist world she revelled in before her 2016 arrest," court papers say.
The papers cite a 2018 message reading, "I didn't do anything wrong under Islam. . I got arrested for what I believe in."
