ISIS ‘soldier’ given 28-year sentence
Convicted terrorist David Daoud Wright sobbed and denounced ISIS as he sought leniency before a judge gave him 28 years for plotting to behead police officers and a conservative blogger.
Wright, 28, of Everett wept as he apologized to police, his family and New York-based blogger Pamela Geller before Judge William G. Young sentenced him to nearly three decades in prison yesterday at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse.
Federal prosecutors sought a life sentence for Wright’s role in urging his uncle, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, 26, to attack police. Wright’s lawyers asked for 16 years. He was convicted in October of conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and obstruction of justice.
Rahim was fatally shot June 2, 2015, in a Roslindale parking lot by police and federal agents while brandishing a 13-inch fight knife. Rahim had just told his nephew it was time to go after the “boys in blue.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney B. Stephanie Siegmann said Wright was operating as a “soldier of ISIS” and “instilled in his uncle the motivation to become a martyr” directing Rahim’s attack against officers.
“He was committed to waging war on the United States,” Siegmann said.
Sobbing loudly, Wright said, “I reject everything ISIS stands for and represents.”
To Geller, who attended the sentencing, Wright said, “I’m so sorry to make you feel you were in a state of fear.”
Geller said in court Wright had terrorized her for expressing her First Amendment rights, forcing her to spend “tens of thousands” on security upgrades for protection. After the hearing, Geller said Wright should be behind bars until he dies and she did not buy his crocodile tears.
“I was not moved by his sobbing. He had been deceitful in court before. Why would he not be deceitful now when he’s up for life?” Geller said.
While prosecutors sought a life sentence, Young said he didn’t think it applied in Wright’s case. He told Wright, “You’re not a monster, yet you embraced a monstrous evil . ... You made the wrong choice, a terrible choice, in my mind. You made it knowingly, and the sentence reflects that.”
Young said Wright’s case helped him fully understand for the first time how someone can be radicalized by a couple of clicks on the computer while on the “dark web.”
In seeking a lighter sentence, defense attorney Jessica Hedges argued, “He has a lot of good in him and he has rejected the whole ideological system that led him to this place.”
Wright’s accomplice, Nicholas Alexander Rovinski, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to commit acts of terrorism and conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, will be sentenced today.