Brooklyn Woman Sentenced to 19 Years for Assisting ISIS
A woman from Brooklyn, New York, has been sentenced to 19 years in federal prison for providing support to a foreign terrorist organization, obstructing justice, and attempting to flee the United States to avoid sentencing.
The individual, identified as Sinmya Amera Ceasar, also known by the alias Umm Nutella, was apprehended in 2016 at John F. Kennedy International Airport while attempting to leave the country to join the terrorist group. Investigations revealed that she had utilized multiple social media accounts to disseminate the group’s propaganda, recruit others within the United States to travel abroad and join the organization, and had expressed a personal desire to become a martyr.
After pleading guilty in 2017 to conspiring to support the terrorist group, Ceasar agreed to cooperate with authorities. However, while out on bail in 2018, she secretly resumed contact with known supporters of the organization, deleted over 1,000 electronic communications, and provided false information to investigators. These actions led to an additional guilty plea for obstructing justice in 2019.
Initially, she was sentenced to 48 months by the late U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein. This decision was later overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which deemed the sentence “shockingly low.” By that time, Ceasar had completed her sentence and was under supervised release. During this period, she downloaded unauthorized applications, reconnected with extremist contacts, and solicited funds from other supporters of the terrorist group. In 2021, on the day she was scheduled for resentencing, she removed her ankle monitor and boarded a bus to New Mexico, prompting a nationwide search.
Authorities later discovered that she had been in contact with individuals in Afghanistan, seeking assistance to reach Russia or the Middle East. This occurred just hours after a deadly suicide bombing at Kabul Airport that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and numerous civilians.
Ceasar was apprehended two days later and pleaded guilty to failure to appear in court in October 2022. Even after being returned to custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, she continued to violate prison rules, evade communications monitoring, and maintain contact with affiliates of the terrorist group.
David J. Scott, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, stated, “Her actions demonstrate a failure to truly accept responsibility. She ultimately cut off her electronic monitoring device and went on the run. With today’s sentencing, she is being held accountable for her criminal actions.”
U.S. Attorney John J. Durham added that Ceasar was “an unrepentant recruiter” whose incarceration is necessary to protect Americans from her extremist ideology.