WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American Islamist militants jailed for threatening violence over the Internet are still posting political writings on the Web – while serving time in federal prison.
Jesse Curtis Morton, a convert to Islam who writes under the name Younus Abdullah Muhammed, posted a lengthy tract opposing U.S. drone policy, on May 21, on the www.islampolicy.com website that he launched in 2010.
Morton is serving a prison term of more than 11 years in a Pennsylvania federal prison after pleading guilty in 2012 to conspiring to solicit murder, make threatening communications and “use the Internet to place others in fear.”
Morton, from Brooklyn, New York, and previously a student at Columbia University, was jailed for threatening the writers of the satirical television show “South Park” for their depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in a bear outfit.
Morton wrote in his latest essay that U.S. use of lethal drones against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Yemen had encouraged homegrown Islamist extremism.
“The drone assassination of Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, an Islamic preacher with tens of thousands of ardent Western followers, has yet to be avenged but his popularity has only risen after death,” Morton wrote, referring to the American Muslim preacher killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
Another American militant, Zachary Chesser, who was found guilty of conspiring with Morton to encourage attacks via the Internet on the creators of “South Park,” has also posted material while in prison. His postings appear on another website www.aseerun.org and mainly air personal grievances, along with some political material.
Chesser is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Marion, Illinois, for the “South Park” case and for attempting to join the Somali militant group al Shabaab.