A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the decades-long prison sentences imposed on three Twin Cities men convicted in a 2016 terror-recruitment trial, agreeing that they planned to commit murder in the name of ISIS.
A court challenge raised by the three men, whose families and supporters filled two courtrooms for oral arguments in June, failed to persuade a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Convicted following what is still considered the nation’s largest probe of 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. Several others successfully made it abroad to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2015, at least three of whom are presumed dead.
