A federal court in the US city of St. Louis sentenced a former Bosnian refugee, Jasminka Ramic, to three years in prison for “conspiring to support” al-Qaeda-linked fighters in Syria. Ms. Ramic entered the United States in 2000 as a refugee, according to the American press. She was granted US citizenship in 2006, but later moved to Germany. She was arrested there last year and brought back to the US to face trial.
According to the prosecution, Ramic sent money overseas to support another Bosniak who formerly lived in St. Louis, and had gone to Syria to fight with the local al-Qaeda branch, Jabhat al-Nusrah. Ramic’s donations were also linked to five other Bosnian-American suspects currently facing similar charges. Ramic was the only one of the group to plead guilty.
At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry said she took into account the suffering that Ramic endured as a Bosnian refugee, as well as the altruistic motives that initially drove her support of a former countryman, Abdullah Ramo Pazara, who had left St. Louis and was in Syria fighting with the al-Nusra Front.
But, Perry noted, Ramic knew Pazara and his group were involved in killings when she sent a total of $700 on three occasions in 2013.
