A U.S. citizen living in Brooklyn, New York, who pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to her support for the Islamic State terrorist group was resentenced Wednesday to 19 years in prison, far short of the 30 to 70 years federal prosecutors sought but nearly five times as long as what she first received.
Sinmyah Amera Ceasar, 30, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto on charges of providing material support and resources to ISIS, a foreign terrorist organization; obstructing justice while released on bail pending sentencing; and failing to appear for court when she attempted to flee the U.S., the Department of Justice said in a news release.
Sue J. Bai, head of DOJ’s National Security Division, said in the news release the resentencing “marks the end of a righteous journey that began a decade ago.”
“Terrorist organizations like ISIS rely on recruiters like Ceasar to attract, indoctrinate, and enlist new followers,” Bai said. “The Department is committed to holding accountable those who seek to follow a similar path. Today was made possible by our prosecutors, staff, and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We are grateful for their tireless pursuit of justice in this case.”
Ceasar pleaded guilty to the material support charge in February 2017, to the obstruction of justice charge in March 2019, and to the failure to appear charge in October 2022. She had faced up to life in prison in 2019 on the providing material support to ISIS and obstruction of justice charges. But U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, who died in 2021, sentenced her in 2019 to four years in prison.
Weinstein reportedly argued that Ceasar was “well on her way to rehabilitation,” citing testimony from her psychologist, and that “this sentence will also save her as a human being.” But Ceasar reconnected with ISIS after serving her sentence while out on supervised release in July 2020, DOJ said.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s sentence in August 2021, calling it “shockingly low, and unsupportable as a matter of law”— and ordered that Ceasar be resentenced, DOJ said. But she failed to appear in court in August 2021, removing her ankle monitoring bracelet. She was captured days later while hiding out in New Mexico.
DOJ said Ceasar wanted to flee to Russia and used a messaging app to contact someone in Afghanistan to seek assistance to travel there. She contacted the person on the same day, Aug. 26, 2021, that an ISIS affiliate conducted a suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan that killed hundreds, including 13 U.S. service members.
Even after Ceasar was returned to custody at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to await sentencing, DOJ said, “she routinely violated Bureau of Prisons institutional rules, circumvented telephone and email monitoring and use restrictions, and continued to communicate and associate with other ISIS supporters.”
Ceasar’s attorney, Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders of New York, told the New York Post she was disappointed with Ceasar’s punishment, acknowledging that her client suffers from mental health issues.
“Lacking the mental health and deradicalization resources everyone — from the FBI to mental health experts — agrees she needs, the court resorted to ‘incapacitating’ a traumatized young woman who has never hurt anyone but herself,” Dornum said.
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