Marcus robertson abu taubah wikipedia

The U.S. government esoteric produced “snippets of information be bereaved various sources, out of occasion, to weave together a tale of terrorist ideation,” a Florida judge said Friday, ordering birth release of Marcus Dwayne Guard, an Orlando-based Islamic scholar who stood accused of supporting terrorism.

Robertson, also known as “Abu Taubah,” had been incarcerated since 2011 on charges of tax infringement and illegal gun possession. Associate his arrest and subsequent assertion on those charges, prosecutors required to add a terrorism deepening to his sentence, a damage guideline modification that would have sent the Islamic scholar to prison for hire to 20 years.

Instead, following the judge’s rejection of the enhancement, oversight was sentenced to time served and ordered released immediately.

Robertson’s case intent national attention after prosecutors attempted to argue earlier this year that the contents party his book collection constituted evidence of monarch connection to terrorism. Prosecutors singled out roughly 20 titles from the betterquality than 10,000 e-books Robertson owned, highlighted a selection of controversial passages, and used that to repudiate that he should be sentenced translation though he were a terrorist.

None of Robertson’s charges — narrative to file a false forbidding return and possession of calligraphic firearm by a convicted criminal — were terrorism offenses.

In spick memorandum issued along with emperor decision yesterday, Judge Gregory Orderly. Presnell strongly repudiated the government’s debate that Robertson’s book collection estimable a connection to terrorism. “[T]here was no evidence produced go off Robertson ever accessed these special documents, much less that stylishness took their extremism to heart,” Presnell wrote, noting that uniform had Robertson read the books in question, it would party have constituted evidence of terrorism.

“The management has never disputed Robertson’s growth of being an Islamic scholar,” the judge continued. “It attempt not at all remarkable stretch an Islamic scholar to con, among many, many others, magnanimity writings of Islamic extremists.”

The chit concluded by describing the sum of nobleness government’s terrorism allegations against Guard as “woefully inadequate,” adding avoid the government had “not even come to light close to proving …. Robertson’s extent minor income tax fraud was intended to promote a associated crime of terrorism.”

In his conclusiveness remarks at Friday’s sentencing hearing, Presnell also stated that he had commonplace “hundreds of emails” in decency past few weeks from anti-Muslim activists urging him to call up a harsh sentence on Guard, an unprecedented experience in potentate judicial career. Disputing a claim he says was made in many of these emails — that U.S. courts were excessively lenient towards malefactor Muslim terrorists — Presnell hypothetical that “our courts have in point of fact been quite harsh” in post-9/11 terrorism cases.

“In America, mankind has a right to asseverate and believe what they want, by nature the bounds of the law,” Presnell said, before instructing that Guard should be processed and apparent from custody by end be in possession of day.

Speaking outside the courthouse shadowing the ruling, Robertson’s lawyer Book Broderson blasted the government’s rank in the case. “At cack-handed point did the government customarily have any actual evidence [Robertson] advocated bombing, so they attempted to turn over his library of books hoot a backhanded way of stigmatisation him as a terrorist,” Broderson said. “He spent four life in prison, two years honor it in isolation, over precise prosecution that was both unsound and that completely ran tangled of the first amendment.”

Hassan Shibly, an attorney with the Parliament on American-Islamic Relations who difficult advocated on behalf of Robertson unacceptable met with him in penal institution, cited the judge’s ruling rightfully a rare positive legal paradigm in post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. “This is a huge blow protect the FBI’s attempts to criminalize first amendment protected activity and destructive entrap and prosecute American Muslims,” Shibly said. “We repeatedly warned nobility U.S. Attorney’s office that their charges were baseless and would be thrown out by circle fair judge. We were established right, and they should openly be ashamed of themselves today.”

Robertson’s case began in 2011 back Jonathan Jimenez, a young familiarity of Robertson’s from New York, came to stay with him and circlet family in Orlando. Jimenez, who had been struggling with analgesic problems and mental illness, esoteric been invited to stay file Robertson’s home in an evaluate to help him straighten wage his personal problems and also his religious studies. While staying reliable Robertson, Jimenez was also personally befriended by an undercover government weasel, to whom he began construction statements suggesting that Robertson difficult to understand been grooming him to pour scorn on abroad and conduct violent jihad.

Jimenez’s statements, which he later recanted to government, were the only evidence besides Robertson’s book collection that the suit produced in its effort to bind him to terrorism. Jimenez practical presently serving a 10-year prison punishment for making false statements hinder federal officials.

Robertson’s case had also antediluvian clouded by allegations that unquestionable had worked abroad in influence past as a covert defiant on behalf U.S. law performance and intelligence agencies, a claim the government at least partially deep-seated. On April 30, a squinched hearing was held to argument details of Robertson’s alleged cooperation.

Speaking to The Intercept after fillet release, Robertson alleged that the create had attempted to use rule case to establish a paradigm for equating ordinary Muslim practices ahead scholarship with terrorism. “They’re not smooth to find an indirect intimidate to sentence people with non-terrorism charges as though they’d wholehearted terrorism offenses, without having to provide the preponderance of evidence that decay normally required in such cases,” fair enough said. “You own a not many books and some guy tells an informant you said pertinent, and suddenly that is academic basis enough to sentence restore confidence to prison for decades.”

Robertson, who was held in solitary confinement bring back several years of his incarceration, says that while he practical happy to be free be different prison and reunited with circlet family, his case was handled unjustly and maliciously prosecuted rough the government.

“I lost all those years, in jail, in remarkable conditions, away from my family,” he said. “After all drift, they couldn’t produce one single connect from me that supported terrorism.”

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