An ISIS recruiter who was arrested by federal agents at JFK Airport attempting to flee the country in November 2016 was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison last week.
Sinmyah Amera Ceasar, 30, of Brooklyn, also known as “Umm Nutella,” was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court for three separately charged crimes: conspiring to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), obstructing justice while released on bail pending sentencing; and failing to appear before the court as required when she attempted to flee the United States.
Ceasar pleaded guilty to the material support charge in February 2017, to the obstruction charge in March 2019, and to the failure to appear charge in October 2022.
“With today’s sentence, Sinmyah Amera Ceasar, an unrepentant ISIS recruiter, will be incarcerated for a significant period of time to protect Americans here and abroad from her extreme violent extremism,” U.S. Attorney John Durham said on April 9. “Even after pleading guilty to providing material support to ISIS, the defendant continued to support terrorists, obstructed justice, and fled from prosecution.”
Between January 2016 and November 2016, Ceasar used numerous social media accounts to praise, promote, and support ISIS and violent jihad and to disseminate ISIS propaganda. She posted under a variety of names, including her nom de guerre, or war name, “Umm Nutella,” which translates to “Mother of Nutella.”
Ceasar developed contacts with ISIS members overseas, recruited individuals in the U.S. to travel to the Middle East to join and fight for ISIS, and used her contacts with ISIS facilitators to attempt to help at least five people from the U.S. to join the terrorist organization abroad. She also expressed her own desire to travel to ISIS-controlled territory to join the group and die as a martyr.
Federal agents arrested Ceasar at JFK Airport in 2016 as she prepared to board an international flight, which was to be the first leg of her journey to join ISIS.
She pleaded guilty in February 2017 to conspiring to provide material support and resources to ISIS and agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation of ISIS members and supporters. In April 2018, she was released on bail, subject to court-ordered conditions of release. Caesar violated those conditions and her cooperation agreement with the feds by reconnecting with individuals she had identified to the government as supporters of ISIS. Ceasar attempted to conceal these communications from the government and from the court, attempted to delete more than 1,000 of her electronic communications, and lied to the feds about her conduct.
The court revoked her bail in July 2018. Ceasar pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding in March 2019.
In June 2019, the late U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein sentenced Ceasar to 48 months imprisonment for the material support and obstruction offenses, and the government appealed. In August 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the sentence, calling it “shockingly low, and unsupportable as a matter of law,” and sent the case back to the district court for resentencing.
While the appeal was pending, Ceasar completed serving the 48-month sentence in July 2020 and began serving an eight-year term of supervised release. Almost immediately after her release, Caesar began to repeatedly violate the conditions of her supervision by downloading and using phone apps that she failed to report to the Probation Department, reconnecting and communicating with ISIS supporters, soliciting funds from ISIS supporters, communicating with convicted felons, using extremist language, and deleting evidence of her violations of the conditions of supervision.
In August 2021, after the Second Circuit issued its decision remanding her case for resentencing, Caesar fled. On the day she was supposed to appear before the Court, Ceasar removed her ankle bracelet monitoring device and fled New York City on a cross-country bus trip to New Mexico, setting off a nationwide fugitive investigation that led to her arrest in New Mexico two days later.
The evidence established that Ceasar intended to escape the U.S. and travel to Russia, and that while fleeing, she used an Internet-based messaging application to contact an individual in Afghanistan to seek assistance to travel there. She sought assistance from the individual in Afghanistan in the hours after ISIS Khorasan carried out a bombing at the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul that killed hundreds, including 13 members of the U.S. Armed Forces. In connection with her flight from prosecution, Ceasar ultimately pleaded guilty to her third separate felony offense, a charge of failing to appear before the Court as required, in October 2022.
After being returned to custody at the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to await sentencing, Caesar routinely violated institutional rules, circumvented telephone and email monitoring and use restrictions, and continued to communicate and associate with other ISIS supporters.
U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto sentenced Ceasar to a total term of 230 months in federal prison on April 9.
“This sentence is a fitting and meaningful outcome for a woman who assisted ISIS in recruiting, squandered the chance for redemption by exposing herself as cooperating with the U.S. government, and persisted in promoting extremist ideologies to potential new recruits online,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch stated.
“I commend our diligent NYPD investigators and all members of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for their unwavering commitment to public safety. The level of teamwork they demonstrate each day is crucial in ensuring the security of New York City and our nation.”
