Iraqi refugee gets 14-year sentence for planning to kill Bush in US
Shafaq News/ An Iraqi man who plotted to assassinate former President George W. Bush as revenge for the Iraq war has been sentenced to 14 years and eight months in prison.
Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, 53, was sentenced on Monday by US District Judge Michael H. Watson in federal court in Columbus, The Washington Post reported. Shihab, who is not a US citizen, will also be under lifetime supervision and will likely be deported by immigration authorities after his release.
Shihab pleaded guilty in March 2023 to trying to help terrorists. He was arrested by the FBI in May 2022 after he revealed his plans to FBI informants between November 2021 and April 2022.
Federal officials said “Bush was never in danger because of the FBI’s intervention.”
Shihab admitted that he was part of a group that wanted to kill Bush for the Iraq War. He spied on Bush’s locations, and obtained weapons and vehicles. He also accepted $40,000 to smuggle four Iraqis into the US through Mexico in late 2021, but the smuggling was a fake operation set up by the FBI.
Court records show that Shihab and an FBI informant went to Bush’s house and the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas in February 2022, and looked at guns and police uniforms at a hotel in Columbus in March 2022.
The case took a long time to resolve. Shihab hesitated on a plea deal at a hearing in January 2023, and refused to be sentenced by Watson, who was a Bush appointee in 2004. Shihab’s sentencing was postponed after he requested and got a public defense attorney who spoke Arabic.
The case also exposed the weaknesses of the American immigration system. Shihab entered the US in 2020 on a visitor visa, and filed a claim for asylum in 2021, which is still pending.
