CHICAGO (AP) – Prosecutors have begun their presentation in a multiday sentencing hearing in Chicago focused on whether FBI agents manipulated a mentally ill teenager to participate in a terrorist plot.
Prosecutors Monday displayed social media postings by Adel Daoud expressing support for attacks against non-Muslims a year before undercover agents engaged him in a sting.
Authorities arrested Daoud in 2012 after he tried to detonate what he believed was a real bomb outside a crowded Chicago bar.
The Hillside, Illinois, man was temporarily deemed mentally unfit in 2016 after declaring Illuminati and “reptilian overlords” were after him. He entered an Alford plea in November.
The defense wants Daoud freed as soon as a mental health program can be tailored for him. Prosecutors want a 40-year prison term, saying Daoud “needed no convincing to kill.”
