DALLAS — Hosam “Sam” Smadi, 20, was sentenced to 24 years in prison Tuesday after apologizing in federal court for plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper last year.
“Your honor, I’m ashamed of what I did,” the Jordanian told U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn. “I’m very sorry for my actions. … I could not have lived with myself if I had hurt anyone.”
Smadi was arrested Sept. 24, 2009, by federal agents who said he had parked what he thought was a car bomb in a garage under the 60-story Fountain Place skyscraper in downtown Dallas.
Once a safe distance away, Smadi dialed a cellphone that he thought would detonate the explosive device, federal officials said. The bomb — which had been provided to him by undercover FBI agents posing as an al-Qaida sleeper cell — was inert.
Addressing the court Tuesday, Smadi said he now hates al-Qaida and believes that its leader Osama bin Laden is a “bad man.”
He said he has no desire now to be a jihadist.
After the judged pronounced sentence, Smadi’s younger sister, Rama, burst into tears and sobbed loudly.
The family and supporters were quickly escorted from the courtroom and out of the building, and reporters were prevented from speaking with them.
At a news conference after the hearing, U.S. Attorney James Jacks and FBI special agent Robert Casey Jr. praised the undercover operation.
“We caught a person who was going to commit an act of murder to advance an ideology,” Casey said. “He was given several chances during the undercover operation to withdraw, and he went forward.”
Earlier Tuesday, a clinical psychologist called to testify for the government refuted defense testimony Monday from two defense psychologists that Smadi was schizophrenic, depressed, had a dissociative disorder and was a substance abuser.
One said that Smadi had hallucinations, delusions and out-of-body experiences, including believing that the devil lived in his Italy, Texas, home, and said that Smadi truly believed, when his mother was sick with brain cancer, that he could heal her.
But Dr. Randy Patterson said Tuesday: “That is not crazy or psychotic to me. That is someone who is very desperate to try and save someone he loves.”
He said Smadi is not schizophrenic, but instead has an adjustment disorder with anxiety and depression. He also said that in his opinion, Smadi has been faking psychotic symptoms.
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On Monday, Smadi’s father, Maher Smadi, one of Hosam Smadi’s teachers and a childhood neighbor testified how Smadi went from being a quiet boy to a troubled teen.
One witness said Smadi’s life took a turn when he was about 13 and a vicious rumor about his mother began circulating through their small village in Jordan.
She had been unfaithful to her husband, the gossips said, which brought shame to the family but was never verified.
At school, Smadi was harassed and ridiculed, according to court witnesses Monday.
At home, he and his mother became the targets of his father’s rage.
“I hit him different ways,” Maher Smadi testified through an interpreter Monday. “I used my hand, a stick, a chain.
“I tried to choke him with my hands to get back at his mother.”
Hosam Smadi was very close to his mother, he said.
“I was very hard on him.”
At 16, Hosam Smadi moved in with family friends in California.
Later, he had married in hopes of becoming a U.S. citizen, and his views had changed from his freewheeling days on the West Coast. When his father visited him in April 2009, he found him suddenly committed to Islam and reading the Quran, Maher Smadi said.
He also seemed to have an interest in Islamic politics and spoke of the conflict in Gaza.
Five months later, Smadi was arrested.
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