BOSTON — An Everett man, found guilty this fall of spearheading a plot to cut off the head of a conservative female blogger who helped organize a controversial “Draw Prophet Muhammad” cartoon-drawing competition in 2015 that ended in violence, landed a 28-year prison sentence on Tuesday, according to federal court documents.
David Daoud Wright, according to an Associated Press report covering his federal court sentencing Tuesday, had lobbied for a 16-year sentence, but Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young was not swayed by Wright’s attorneys, who claimed their client deserved a chance for redemption. The blogger Wright and two other men had targeted, Pamela Geller, was present for Tuesday’s sentencing and told the judge that “there is no assurance that anyone can give me that he [Wright] would not resume his quest to kill me and my relatives.”
The AP report noted that Geller revealed that threats made against her have prompted her to spend tens of thousands of dollars on security. Geller had urged Young to impose a lifetime sentence on Wright.
Wright was convicted in October of conspiring with his uncle and another man from Rhode Island to behead Geller on behalf of the Islamic State.
While the plan never took shape, Wright’s uncle, Usaamah Rahim of Roslindale, apparently told Wright during a recorded telephone call that he would be going after “those boys in blue” instead. While Rahim was under surveillance in June 2015 in Boston, police say, he brandished a 13-inch knife at police, who shot him dead.
The third accomplice, Warwick, Rhode Island resident Nicholas Rovinski, reached a plea with prosecutors last year and testified against Wright.
Rovinski is slated to be sentenced Wednesday.
On Monday, Young denied Wright’s bid for a new trial.
Later on Tuesday Geller fired off a new blog post criticizing Wright’s sentencing:
The sentence has just been handed down, and it is wrong. They offered him 30 years. He didn’t take it. So he ends up with 28. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Not only did Daoud Wright target me for a brutal, cruel and violent death, but there has been no indication that he has given up these beliefs, and they will only be reinforced while he is in prison, due to a prison system that is rife with jihad recruitment that prison officials are unable or unwilling to do anything about. There is no indication that once he is released from prison at any time in the future, that he would not resume his quest to kill me. He should have been given, as I requested, the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. This sentence sends the message to thousands of others like Daoud Wright that they can plot freely to murder those who say things that offend their evil ideology, and the consequences will be slight.
