Homeland Security News

Police in China's far-western region of Xinjiang have shot dead a man who drove through a security checkpoint, the local government said on Thursday, the latest violence to hit the troubled area with a large Muslim population.

The man, Abdul Basiti Abdulimiti, was a "terrorist" from Keping county in Aksu prefecture, the Aksu government said on its website. It did not identify him as one of the mainly Muslim Uighur people who call the region home, but his name suggests he was.  Abdulimiti was killed on Saturday after he stormed two security checkpoints on a motorcycle, ignoring warning shots fired by officers, the Xinjiang government said on its local news portal, Tianshannet. He snatched a firearm and assaulted a police officer, the government said.

Read more:  Reuters

Just a few years ago Mohammad Khalid was a suburban teenager with a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University, but today he was sentenced by a federal judge in Philadelphia for terrorism offenses.  Judge Petrese B. Tucker sentenced Khalid to five years in prison, after hearing vigorous arguments from both his lawyers and prosecutors.

Prosecutors had said they wanted the judge to send Khalid, who lived in Howard County, to prison for up to a decade for his role in a terror group that planned to launch attacks in Europe.  Khalid linked up with "truly dangerous people" as he lived a double life, they say.

Khalid's legal team argued that he had Aspergers Sydrome that had gone undiagnosed and was pulled into an online life where he grew closer with aspiring terrorists, while retreating from his family.  They asked him to be released based on the time he has already spent in jail.  Khalid is not a U.S. citizen and potentially faces deportation when he is released from prison.  A number of other people were charged in the plot alongside Khalid, including Colleen LaRose, a woman who was known as Jihad Jane in online terror circles.