Connecticut man gets 12 years in prison for failed plan to fight for Islamic State in Syria

A Connecticut man who pleaded guilty to planning to fight for the Islamic State group in Syria was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison on terrorism charges, a lighter sentence than what was sought by prosecutors who called him a danger to the world. called society.

A judge imposed the sentence on Kevin McCormick, 30, a former Hamden resident, in federal court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the U.S. attorney's office sought a 20-year prison sentence. Judge Kari Dooley also ordered that McCormick be released on supervised release with GPS monitoring for the remainder of his life after time behind bars.

“His desire to fight for and kill people for a violent foreign terrorist organization, and his multiple attempts to travel to the Middle East to carry out that desire, demonstrate that he poses a serious threat,” Assistant U.S. Attorney wrote of US Neeraj Patel in condemning the government. recommendation.

McCormick, who was arrested in October 2019 as he tried to board a plane to Canada with plans to continue flying to the Middle East, pleaded guilty in January to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He has been in custody since his arrest.

McCormick's attorney, public defender Charles Willson, asked the judge to release his client on parole, saying further punishment was not necessary.

“More prison time for someone with Mr. McCormick's mental health issues and who was in the midst of a breakdown at the time of the offense does not promote respect for the law or deter anyone,” Willson wrote in his sentencing recommendation.

The Associated Press sent Willson an email seeking comment.

In court documents, the public defender said McCormick's mental health was “in free fall” at the time of his arrest. He said McCormick had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and had severe reactions to his medication. McCormick suffered psychotic episodes and other conditions that landed him in the hospital, he said.

“To cope over the years, and to try to address other interests, Mr. McCormick had looked for direction within the Muslim faith, but that led him to delve deeper and deeper into online information that he believed irrationally supported his growing faith and isolated and obsessed him. about perceived lofty tenets of the faith,” Willson wrote.

He added: 'Everyone could see that he was struggling to get on the right path, although no one knew the depths of his chaos in his life and thinking.'

During the criminal trial, McCormick was initially declared incompetent to stand trial. But he was deemed competent after undergoing medical treatment.

Federal authorities said McCormick, a former contract driver for a major company, told several people he wanted to fight for the Islamic State group in Syria. He also pledged his allegiance to IS and its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who committed suicide on October 27, 2019, as US commandos closed in on him in northern Syria.

“It must be like Syria,” McCormick told a government informant, according to federal prosecutors. “Wherever ISIL (IS) is… whatever place is easiest, whatever place I can get there quickest, quickest, easiest, and where I can have a gun and have some people, buddy.”

In September 2019, McCormick tried to buy a gun and a knife in Washington state, but a clerk refused because McCormick was acting strangely, authorities said. On Oct. 12, 2019, he tried to board a flight from Connecticut to Jamaica, where he planned to take another flight en route to Syria, but Homeland Security officials would not let him on the plane, prosecutors said.

McCormick was arrested several days later at a small private airport in Connecticut, where he expected to board a plane to Canada and then fly to Jordan, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said McCormick has never denied his support for Islamic State and recently told a psychiatrist that he is not mentally ill and does not need medication. While detained during the case, McCormick committed detention violations for fighting, assaults and threats, they said, including an arrest for allegedly assaulting a corrections officer.

Islamic State fighters conquered parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring the establishment of a so-called Islamic caliphate, at a time when Syria was already ravaged by civil war. The fighting destroyed several cities before the Iraqi prime minister declared the caliphate defeated in 2017. Two years later, the extremists lost the last of their territory, although sporadic attacks continue even today.

According to the United Nations, at the height of the fighting, as many as 40,000 people from 120 countries showed up to participate. There are no comprehensive U.S. statistics on how many of those foreign fighters were Americans. A 2018 report from George Washington University's Program on Extremism found at least 64 people who had joined the jihadist struggle in Iraq and Syria since 2011.