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Home Front: WoT
Virginia Man Sentenced for Spying for Syrian Government
2012-07-22
Hat tip to Instapundit.
A Virginia man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for passing intelligence to the Syrian government, the Justice Department said. Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid was accused of collecting information, audio and video of individuals protesting the Syrian government in the U.S. and Syria and giving it to Syrian intelligence agencies.

"While the autocratic Syrian regime killed, kidnapped, intimidated and silenced thousands of its own citizens, Mr. Soueid spearheaded efforts to identify and intimidate those protesting against the Syrian government in the United States," said Neil MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a statement.

Mr. Soueid, a Syrian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to six counts of acting as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors said he recruited individuals in the U.S. to help gather information and supplied the Syrian government with contact information for key protesters in the U.S. and others.

Mr. Soueid hand-wrote a letter of support to a Syrian official in April 2011, saying that he believed the dissension should be disposed of in a quick and decisive manner even through violence, home invasions and arrests.

Haytham Faraj, who represented Mr. Soueid before he ran out of money, called Mr. Soueid's sentence "laughable," next to the charges he had faced.

"He was facing many years in prison. They claim that he was responsible for the deaths of many people," Mr Faraj said.
So deport him after his sentence. To the new rulers of Syria...
Michael Nachmanoff, the Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of Virginia, said the sentence reflected that "Soueid was motivated by a desire to prevent Islamic radicals from taking over his home country of Syria."
He was a US citizen. His 'home country' was supposed to be the USA.
Posted by:Steve White

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