Tagged: Waad Ramadan Alwan

An Iraqi man sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to terrorism charges in Bowling Green has been assigned to a high-security facility in Indiana.

The federal Bureau of Prisons lists 32 year old Waad Ramadan Alwan as an inmate at United States Penitentiary-Terre Haute. The high security facility is about 70 miles west of Indianapolis.  A co-defendant, 25 year old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, is serving life in prison at the United States Penitentiary-Big Sandy in Inez, KY.

An Iraqi man who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges has filed a notice of appeal of his sentence of life in prison without parole.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi intends to ask the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the sentence handed down in January after he pleaded guilty to working to ship thousands in cash, machine guns, rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles to al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2011. U.S. District Judge Thomas Russell sentenced the 25 year old Hammadi in January in Bowling Green.

A co-defendant in the case received a 40 year sentence, he has not filed a notice of appeal.

Prosecutors say the two men were caught in an FBI sting with an informant posing as a contact with terrorists in Iraq.

Two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green who admitted sending weapons and money to Al-Qaeda in Iraq were sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green. Both Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanned Shareef Hamaddi admitted taking part in insurgent activities in Iraq prior to arriving in the U.S. in 2009.  Federal authorities found Alwan's fingerprint on an unexploded bomb in Iraq and launched an investigation.

The Iraqi men were arrested in 2011 after they agreed to help a government informant load cash and weapons into a tractor-trailer they were told was destined for Al-Qaeda in Iraq. 

Over the course of five hours, each man separately received his punishment. First to enter the courtroom was the 31-year-old Alwan. Wearing prison orange, he sat next to his interpreter, and appeared unmoved by the piercing stares from the courtroom audience. Justice Department Attorney Larry Schneider said Alwan was interested in becoming the leader of a terrorist cell in the U.S. and that he recruited Hammadi, describing him as "worth his weight in gold," and as an "experienced" insurgent.