A Brooklyn architect was sentenced to 15 years in prison Tuesday after he tried to travel overseas and join a jihadist terror group in one of Pakistan’s far-flung tribal regions.
Agron Hasbajrami, 28, an Albanian citizen legally residing in the US, was lured away from his New York City architecture career after becoming radicalized on Internet web sites preaching holy war.
Defense attorney Steve Zissou said that Hasbajrami represented yet another example of “passionate young men deluded by a false idol” – online web sites espousing “propaganda” and radical Islam. “He bought into for a while,” Zissou told the judge.
Hasbajrami apologized for his actions and admitted that he was “ashamed” for his “bad judgment of emotions.”
“I always condemned terrorism in my heart. Terrorism is the worst thing anyone can do,” Hasbajrami said.
But Brooklyn federal Judge John Gleeson noted that Hasbajrami had not renounced his plan, and actually was arrested trying to put it into action.
Although he came to New York “to pursue the American dream,” experiencing frustration over economic problems and ethnic “difficulties” eventually led to the “young aspiring architect” to become “a young aspiring jihadist martyr,” the judge said.
“You came to Brooklyn and decided you wanted to kill Americans,” Gleeson said, explaining that he would have sentenced Hasbajrami to more time behind bars but decided to not usurp a plea agreement with prosecutors putting a 15-year ceiling on the prison term for providing material support to terrorists.
Hasbajrami was arrested in Sept. 2011 at JFK airport as he tried to board a flight to Turkey while carrying with him a tent, boots and cold-weather gear. In his passport was an Iranian visa. The feds say that Hasbajrami was headed eventually to Pakistan’s western frontier to seek training from terror groups operating along its border with Afghanistan.
“Hoping to die a martyr to the cause of violent jihad, he will spend 15 years of his remaining days in federal prison,” said Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
mmaddux@nypost.com