Public service has its price.
Three years ago, U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary learned how steep that price can be. A suspected terrorist in Ohio put out a contract on the judge’s life.
The Justice Department said the murder plot took shape inside the county jail in Toledo, Ohio, in the spring of 2016. Yahya Farooq Mohammad was in custody awaiting trial before Zouhary on federal charges of supporting terrorism.
Authorities said Mohammad raised $22,000 to underwrite anti-American attacks by Anwar-al-Awlaki, an American-born Al Qaeda leader who’d been in hiding in Yemen.
Mohammad told a fellow jail inmate he would to pay $15,000 for Zouhary’s murder. The inmate told authorities. An FBI agent posing as a hit man got in touch with Mohammad, who arranged a $1,000 down payment.
“I never anticipated I would face the ordeal of a defendant putting a price on my head and taking concrete steps to hire for murder — my murder,” Zouhary said.
Mohammad’s plan made no sense, Zouhary added, since “ getting rid of me could only achieve the appointment of a new judge on the case.”
Mohammad, a citizen of India, pleaded guilty in 2017 to soliciting a crime of violence as well as the original terrorism counts, He’s serving 27 ½ years in the federal “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo.
Should he live long enough to complete his sentence (he’s 41 now), he faces immediate deportation.