Indian man from Ohio pleads guilty to providing support to terrorists

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Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 39, pleaded guilty July 10, to conspiring to provide and conceal material support to terrorists and soliciting someone to kill a U.S. federal judge handling his case.

Mohammad is an Indian citizen who was an engineering student at Ohio State University between 2002 and 2004. He married a U.S. citizen in 2008. He and three other defendants – his brother, Ibrahim Mohammad, Asif Ahmed Salim, and Sultane Room Salim – were indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2015. The case against the remaining three defendants is pending. They have pleaded not guilty. Mohammad and his associates did ensure that Awlaki received the money through a courier, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

Mohammad also admitted to soliciting an undercover FBI employee, posing as a “hitman,” to kidnap and murder U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary, to whom his case was assigned. . Around about April 2016, Mohammad told another inmate in the Lucas County Corrections Center in Toledo, Ohio that he wanted Zouhary kidnapped and murdered and that he was willing to pay $15,000 to have this carried out. The inmate, working with the undercover agent, purported to help Mohammad solicit the ‘hitman” even paying money through a relative.

When asked when he wanted the murder committed, Mohammad reportedly said, “The sooner would be good, you know.”

Under the terms of his plea agreement, Mohammad is expected to be sentenced to 27 ½ years in federal prison, and will be deported from the U.S. after serving his sentence.