A 32-year-old prison inmate and Muslim convert from Massachusetts has been sentenced to three years behind bars for threatening to kill then Barack Obama when US president, prosecutors announced.
Alex Hernandez was sentenced Wednesday by federal judge Indira Talwani to 37 months, to be served concurrently with a five-to-eight-year term he is already serving for drugs and firearms offenses.
He pleaded guilty in May to one count of threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm on the then commander-in-chief.
Federal agents were tipped off in 2015 that Hernandez wanted to kill Obama and obtain false travel documents to flee the country afterwards, prosecutors said.
In a subsequent sting operation within the prison where he was jailed, he allegedly told an undercover agent he wanted to attack the White House and was studying how to make explosives to “create chaos” around government buildings.
Prosecutors quoted Hernandez as saying that he wanted to target Obama because “he’s the one that gives the orders.”
He allegedly justified the would-be attack by saying his “brothers” were fighting for “the caliphate in the Middle East” and griped that the US government was “painting it like they are the bad guys.”
Obama, a Democrat, left office in January 2017 after eight years as America’s first black president. He was replaced by Donald Trump, the New York billionaire turned Republican politician.
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