James Bradley, a 21-year-old former Boy Scout, was sentenced yesterday to 11 years in federal prison after being arrested in New Jersey while boarding a Yemen-bound ship planning to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization.
Bradley, a resident of The Bronx (NYC), had pleaded guilty in September to one charge of attempting to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, in a plea deal with prosecutors.
His attorneys had asked in court documents for a time served sentence, arguing that he had deradicalized through work he completed with a nonprofit group after his arrest in March 2021. But federal court Judge Paul Engelmayer of Manhattan said such a request was “completely impossible.”
“I can’t foresee the future, none of us can,” Judge Engelmayer said in imposing the 11-year sentence, adding that the nonprofit workers who “de-radicalized” Bradley “don’t have crystal balls,” he cited. New York Post. “The seriousness of the offense is difficult to get around,” he added.
Federal prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence, arguing that Bradley was fully committed to joining the terrorist state when he was arrested and wanted to do so to kill innocent Americans.
“The defendant was determined to take up arms for ISIS one way or another,” Assistant US Attorney Kaylan Lasky told Engelmayer at Thursday’s hearing.
Bradley also addressed the court, apologizing to his family and loved ones and insisting that he had made a full recovery. “I am really ashamed and sorry for what I have done,” he said. “I’m so different from the James Bradley that he was arrested two years ago.”
Before imposing the sentence, Engelmayer credited Bradley’s family and nonprofit employees who worked with him to free him from the grip of extremist ideology.
Bradley became linked to the terror group after converting to Islam near the end of his senior year in high school in 2018 and began attending services at a mosque on the Upper East Side. He immersed himself in ISIS propaganda on the Internet for the next two years and eventually married a fellow Alabama radical, Arwa Muthana, despite knowing her for only a few weeks.
The couple were arrested on March 31, 2021 on the gangplank of a freighter in Newark that they had paid to be taken to Yemen and then take up arms for the Islamic State. Muthana has also pleaded guilty, but she has not yet been sentenced.
In a similar case, Shaikh Abdullah Faisal, a radical Islamic cleric from Jamaica, was convicted last week of recruiting and supporting the ISIS terror group from New York.
Also in late January, Islamic extremist Sayfullo Saipov who killed eight people with a speeding truck in Manhattan in 2017 was found guilty of federal crimes. He now he could face the death penalty.