The US Department of Justice says a Canadian citizen born in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for conspiring to provide support resulting in death to the terrorist organization ISIS. The Justice Department statement said Muhammad Khalifa, 39, pleaded guilty last December in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy to provide material or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death. The statement said Khalifa was a top Islamic State propaganda official who served as an English-language narrator in more than a dozen violent ISIS videos. He says he played a key role in the group’s successful efforts to recruit tens of thousands of foreign fighters to defend its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria. It also says Khalifa, who was captured in Syria in 2019, served as an ISIS fighter and executed two Syrian soldiers on behalf of the terrorist organization. The statement said Khalifa narrated two of ISIS’s most violent videos: “Flames of War: Fighting Has Just Begun” and “Flames of War II: Until The Final Hour,” which depict prisoner executions and terrorist attacks in the US. Global Affairs Canada was not immediately available to comment on the sentencing. “During the time that Khalifa was a prominent member of ISIS, the terrorist organization conducted a brutal hostage and ransom campaign involving journalists and aid workers who came to Syria from around the world,” the Justice Department statement said. USA. “Between August 19, 2014 and February 6, 2015, ISIS killed eight American, British, and Japanese citizens in Syria as part of a hostage plot.” Khalifa’s defense lawyers had asked for just 20 years in prison at Friday’s sentencing hearing, arguing he was less culpable than two British-born Islamic State members who personally beat and tortured Western hostages. They also argued that it is wrong for the US to impose such a severe sentence against a Canadian who was not convicted of directly killing or harming any American and could just as easily be extradited to Canada. With files from the Associated Press. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 31, 2022.
