Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison for his involvement with Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi in the May 2015 attack at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland. The conviction was for conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization, interstate transportation of firearms and additional charges.
Simpson and Soofi attempted to carry out an attack on a ‘Draw the Prophet’ contest, which was viewed as an anti-Islam event. The event was a contest in which drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, considered offensive to Muslims, were displayed.
The attack was cut short when a Garland police officer shot and killed both terrorists. A Garland ISD security officer was shot in the leg before Simpson and Soofi were killed.
Kareem is an American-born Muslim convert.
According to an AP report by Jacques Billeaud, authorities said that Kareem viewed videos featuring violence by jihadists with Simpson and Soofi and encouraged them to organize and carry out the attack. Authorities also said that he researched travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State fighters.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton said that Kareem knew what Simpson and Soofi were planning to do.
He testified that he didn’t know his friends were going to attack the contest and didn’t find out about the shooting until after Simpson and Soofi were killed.
After the sentence was announced, Kareem told the judge that he had “nothing to do with this crime.”
Daniel Maynard, Kareem’s attorney reiterated the fact that Kareem was in Arizona at the time of the attack.
Prosecutor Kristen Brook said that Kareem had assisted in an attempted mass murder. She added that he had previously celebrated the 2015 attack on the French magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ and that he had indicated that he wished to strap a bomb on his body to “kill nonbelievers.”