Convicted in what is still considered the nation’s largest probe of ISIS (Islamic State) terror recruitment, Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, Abdirahman Yasin Daud and Guled Ali Omar were the only three of nine defendants in the case to stand trial. Ilhan Omar’s request wasn’t based on their innocence, but on her perception that it wasn’t really their fault, it was their youth and their environment.

TheLid In her letter to the judge, the future Minnesota US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote:

“As you undoubtedly deliberate with great caution the sentencing of nine recently convicted Somali-American men, I bring to your attention the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison. Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. … Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment…”

Despite her plea, a federal appeals court has upheld lengthy prison sentences for three Twin Cities Somali Muslim men who were convicted in 2016 of plotting to join the Islamic State group to fight in Syria and kill on behalf of the terrorist group. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected challenges by Guled Omar, Abdirahman Daud and Mohamed Farah, who had sought to have their convictions overturned.

A three-judge panel wrote that the evidence against the three was overwhelming. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sentenced Omar, who at one time was the group’s leader, to 35 years in prison. Farah and Daud each got 30 years.