Judge weighs juvenile facility for young terror plotter

A federal judge has held for review a defense request to transfer 18-year-old Mohammad Hassan Khalid - the youngest person ever charged in a U.S. terrorism plot - to a secure juvenile treatment center near Harrisburg.

U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker said she would rule on the motion filed by Khalid's lawyers after she consults with federal probation and prison officials.

Tucker heard about 30 minutes of oral argument this morning by defense attorneys Jeffrey M. Lindy and Alan J. Tauber and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer A. Williams.

Khalid, a Pakistani-born student living with his family in Ellicott City, Md., was arrested as a juvenile last July and in October, after he turned 18, was charged by a federal grand jury in Philadelphia

Last month, Khalid pleaded guilty to conspiring to recruit jihadists and raising money for terrorists overseas, working online from the tiny Howard County apartment he shared with his parents and three siblings.

Sentencing has not been set although Khalid reportedly faces a 15-year no-parole sentence.

The introverted, rail-thin teenager had lived legally in Maryland for four years. A brilliant student, Khalid had been accepted last fall at Johns Hopkins University on a full scholarship.

The federal grand jury also indicted Ali Charaf Damache, 46, an Algerian being held by Irish authorities pending extradition to the United States. Damache allegedly used the e-mail moniker "theblackflag" with other jihadists, and the indictment portrays him as a leader of the group.

Khalid and Damache are charged with providing material support to Colleen R. LaRose, the former Montgomery County, Pa. woman known as Jihad Jane. She pleaded guilty early last year to conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Mohammedm a blasphemy in Islam.

Also charged in the case was a Leadville, Colo., woman, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, who traveled to Ireland in 2009 and married Damache, whom she did not know, as part of the conspiracy.

Khalid is currently housed at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. Dressed in an olive-green jump suit, he smiled slightly as he met his lawyers.

Lindy argued that it was in the U.S. interest for Khalid to be transferred to a secure state juvenile facility in Loysville, Perry County, where he could receive psychotherapy before he is sentenced.

Lindy said mental evaluations have shown Khalid suffers from severe depression and has been unable to adjust to U.S. society. Khalid was born in Pakistan and lived 11 years in the United Arab Emirates before his father immigrated and brought the rest of the family here.

Khalid's isolation from U.S. society and his emotional immaturity is what made him vulnerable to the Internet overtures of alleged jihadists such as Damache, Lindy argued.

"He's almost certainly going to be deported," Lindy told Tucker. "Without treatment, he goes back to Pakistan and the same young man is now going to be in Pakistan where we know what happens with the radical Islam movement."

Williams said the government opposed the transfer to a state juvenile facility, principally because of the cost. She said she had no objection to Khalid's family paying for psychiatric professionals to visit him in the detention center.

Lindy, however, said Khalid's family - they were not present in court - could not afford to pay for private psychological care.