ORLANDO, Fla. – A federal judge says prosecutors took snippets of information out of context to create a nonexistent terrorism plot by an Islamic scholar in Florida.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell last week ordered the imam, Marcus Robertson of Orlando, released from jail for time served. Presnell called prosecutors' efforts to give Robertson a terrorism enhancement during sentencing "woefully inadequate."
The enhancement could have imprisoned Robertson for up to 10 years.
Robertson was convicted of tax fraud in 2013. Prosecutors claimed he committed the fraud to pay for another man to go to Mauritania to be trained in violent jihad. Prosecutors backed up their claim by saying Robertson's computer contained documents by Islamic extremists.
But the judge noted those documents were only about 20 works out of 10,000 on the computer.
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