Adham Amin Hassoun is a convict formerly incarcerated in the United States as a conspirator of José Padilla, an American initially held as an enemy combatant for supplying aid to terrorists.[1][2]
Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian who first moved to the United States in the late 1980s, was first arrested in 2002 for overstaying his visa.[3]
In August 2007, he was convicted, along with Padilla, of conspiracy and material support charges and sentenced to a prison term of 15 years, 8 months.[4][5][6]
Hassoun had been a computer programmer and resident of Broward County, Florida. Sofian Abdelaziz, a member of the American Muslim Association of North America, who knew Hassoun from his activity in the Florida Muslim community, made this comment on Hassoun: "I would consider him that he's against violence, but he has a strong tongue, you know, he has a strong tongue!"[2]
Hassoun was charged in connection with his financing of Padilla's trip to Egypt.[7] Prosecutors alleged that Hassoun set up a local office of the charity Benevolence International, which was used as a front for al Qaeda.[7] A 2011 NPR report claimed he was being held in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit.[8]
When Hassoun finished his sentence, in 2017, as a non-citizen, he would normally have been deported.[9] However, since he was stateless, he continued to be imprisoned.[10]
Hassoun was released on July 22, 2020.[11] He was deported and resettled in Rwanda, whose government agreed to receive him on humanitarian grounds.[12]
Hassoun is now being held on an immigration charge at an INS facility and is considered a flight risk. U.S. officials describe him as an 'important link' not only to the Padilla investigation, but possibly to a suspected U.S.-based al Qaeda network awaiting orders for future attacks.
Prosecutors contended that Adham Amin Hassoun, 45, a computer programmer of Palestinian descent, recruited Padilla, 37, at a mosque in Broward County, Florida. The government argued that both Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 46, an engineer and schools administrator originally from Jordan, provided supplies, recruits and money to radical Islamic jihadists abroad.
Cooke sentenced Padilla's recruiter, 45-year-old Adham Amin Hassoun, to 15 years and eight months in prison and 46-year-old Kifah Wael Jayyousi to 12 years and eight months.
Sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, Hassoun should have been a free man in 2017. Instead, he found himself in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which locked him up in western New York. It was there that Hassoun's case turned extraordinary.
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