ISIS wannabe found guilty sent to rehab instead of jail

Abdullahi Yusuf, 19, of Minnesota was allowed to depart from jail and stay at a halfway home after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS in January, Daily Beast reports.

The is the first known attempt at "de-radicalising" a would-be ISIS fighter, and it was to involve regular meetings with a counselor.

The de-radicalization program was proposed by his attorney to Judge Micheal Davis who approved it to the objection of prosecutors.

Yusuf was assigned a bed at a halfway house in St. Paul where after he was released with an electronic monitoring device around his ankle. He could only leave for approved activities—like meetings with his mentors from a civics group called Heartland Democracy.

Heartland director Mary McKinley said she was not exactly sure why Yusuf's proposal was granted, other than maybe it "just made sense."

She added:

"On the other hand, it was also a surprise that any kind of access was given. But I think it says a lot about what the U.S. attorney and the community were trying to do."

This is Heartland's first experience with de-radicalising jihadis, and in general government’s first attempt at deradicalizing ISIS sympathizers.

The US never faced large numbers of homegrown jihadi terrorists until the rise of ISIS.

Several countries have government sanctioned de-radicalisation programs including Canada, a few countries in Europe, and Saudi Arabia.

Mary McKinley in court documents proposed adapting Heartland’s existing civics program for gangs to Yusuf.

She said one of the first objectives is to “coach our youth in deep and sustained civic empowerment and ‘real’ civics made accessible, experiential, and multi-dimensional through the Empowering U curriculum and coaching method,” which is the program Heartland Democracy previously used.

"This is the first time actually, as far as we can tell, that somebody has had the opportunity to be part of something like this," McKinley told The Daily Beast, though she added that she was reluctant to call what her program does "deradicalization."

"I don't call it that because that's not what my background is in," she said. "I guess people could label it as such."

The judge approved Yusuf’s release in late January. He and a Somali-American mentor began to work through an extensive reading list, which included Richard Wright’s Native Son, a novel about growing up poor and black in the 1930s, and an article by Native American author Sherman Alexie about how poetry freed him from the “reservation” of his mind.

Regarding meetings with his mentor, she said, "we met with him regularly, I don't know the number of times a week."

When pressed on whether they met weekly, biweekly, or at a different pace, McKinley would not clarify. "We met with him regularly."

Court documents also reference Yusuf meeting with religious leaders, but McKinley wasn't sure about that.

"I don't know if he's met with any religious leaders," she said in response to a question about meeting with imams. "I mean he's an adult, he can get any visitor he wants."

In April, the halfway house’s inspection of Yusuf’s room turned up a boxcutter, which got him kicked out of the home—but not out of rehab.

“He has been continuing with his reading and his writing and his studying in the jail, and now we’ve gotten approval for his mentors to go into the jail to meet with him one on one,” Yusuf’s lawyer, Jean Brandl, said.

The proposal for Yusuf did not say how anyone would determine whether he's been de-radicalized.

"There hasn't been enough time yet to determine success, other than that he continues on the path that he's on," McKinley said. "My goal is just to keep working with him. I'm not at a point where I would have some grand goal. It's a small part of the puzzle."

“When you put a terrorism prism on it, people’s anxiety level rises,” said Mubin Shaikh, a former Islamic radical who now studies programs to disengage and deradicalize other young people. Shaikh said rehab for wannabe terrorists isn’t really groundbreaking: similar techniques have been used in gang prevention for decades.

“There’s an increasing awareness that [U.S. officials] want to at least try to give some of these kids an option, at least while their cases work through the court,” Shaikh said. “It’s a good step for sure.”