NOVANEWS
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At the sentencing hearing with as many surprises as any prime-time courtroom drama, Judge George O’Toole Jr. addressed the question that’s been asked since the day Tarek Mehanna was arrested in Sudbury in 2009: Who is the real Mehanna?
“In many ways, the defendant has acted as an exemplary citizen,’’ O’Toole said before sentencing Mehanna to 17½ years in federal prison.
He was a “serious young man’’ who wanted to “exemplify Islam,’’ said the judge, but became consumed by a fervor that led him to support al Qaeda by translating materials from Arabic into English and “proselytizing’’ to recruit others to embrace his views.
“He was successful in those attempts on the micro and macro levels,’’ due in large part to a charisma “I think we’ve seen in this court,’’ O’Toole said in reference to the supporters who voiced a Muslim greeting to Mehanna when he arrived in court yesterday morning, shouted out “We love you’’ to him as he was escorted out during a break, and applauded him as he was handcuffed and taken away after being sentenced.
His “religious scholarship made him a trusted leader,’’ locally, and his postings on Internet sites extended his notoriety to other parts of the world, said O’Toole.
Letters supporters sent O’Toole to consider while weighing the sentence showed they couldn’t reconcile the Mehanna they knew “with what he’s accused of in the indictment.’’
But, said O’Toole, “it’s not an uncommon phenomenon. … We all have the capacity for good and evil.’’
In his speech to the judge, Mehanna espoused his views of good and evil, saying he has been influenced by Paul Revere and American Minutemen who stood against British tyranny in the streets not far from the Boston courthouse, as well as Nelson Mandela, who was once considered a terrorist in South Africa.
And Batman, his favorite comic book hero.
“Batman introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up. There are oppressors. There are the oppressed. And there are those who stood up to defend the oppressed.
“This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated to any book that reflected that paradigm,’’ such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin’’ and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.’’
At Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, he learned about Harriet Tubman and Anne Frank, Martin Luther King and Ho Chi Minh, all of whom stood up to oppressors in some way.
