A suburban Chicago man snared in a 2013 internet sting is being sentenced for seeking to join an al-Qaida-linked group fighting Bashar Assad's regime in Syria.
There's a wide gap between the prison terms prosecutors and defense lawyers want for Abdella Ahmad Tounisi (too-NEE'-see) at Thursday's Chicago hearing. Prosecutors want the maximum 15 years for attempting to provide material support to terrorists. The defense wants seven, which, with time served, could mean he's out in just a few years.
Tounisi was 18 when agents arrested him after he left his Aurora, Illinois, home and went to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2013.
He'd visited a sham extremist website created by the FBI weeks earlier. It invited visitors to fight under "the true banner of Islam."
Tounisi pleaded guilty in 2015.
