Remember Urooj Rahman, the Israel-hating human rights lawyer who brought some palestinian tactics to Brooklyn when she hurled a Molotov cocktail in to a police cruiser while wearing a keffiyeh over her face? The last time I wrote about her, it looked like she might face life in prison.
Well, it turns out her sentence will likely be less than this. Way less.
The pair of radical lawyers who torched an empty NYPD vehicle amid protests in Brooklyn over the police killing of George Floyd pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy charges in a deal struck with federal prosecutors.
The firebug attorneys, Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, each copped to counts of conspiracy to commit arson and to make and possess an unregistered destructive device for firebombing the police van in Brooklyn on May 30, 2020, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office said.
They had previously pleaded guilty to possessing a destructive device – but successfully fought prosecutors’ effort to give them a lengthy sentence under a “terrorism enhancement.”
Under the plea deal cemented Thursday, prosecutors will not seek the enhancement, and will request for a maximum sentence of two years in prison.
In a May court filing, prosecutors noted the federal probation department said the enhancement was too strong given their otherwise law-abiding lives.
“This increase appears to over-represent the maliciousness of the defendants’ intentions in committing the offense, while also negating the defendants’ otherwise law-abiding lives free of prior criminal convictions,” the federal probation department wrote.
Yeah, about that otherwise law-abiding life…
In a blog post now scrubbed from the Leitner Center and even removed from the Internet Archive since her arrest (but thankfully screenshotted by this Twitter user), Rahman wrote about being at a protest in Haifa, painting her and her fellow protestors as peaceful and the IDF soldiers as cartoonishly evil and violent.
But it turns out, even Ha’aretz reported that this was a violent protest in which the head of Haifa’s police was assaulted with a club. Elsewhere, it was reported that protesters even chanted slogans welcoming Hamas rocket fire at Tel Aviv.
Perhaps this is why the blog was scrubbed from the Internet after Rahman’s arrest – she didn’t want her attendance at this violent protest to become public knowledge.
Hat tip: Gadi
