A Charlotte man convicted of sending money to terrorist groups will likely taste freedom again, after his sentence was significantly reduced Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen reduced the sentence of Mohamad Hammoud to 30 years in prison on the second day of his re-sentencing hearing.
"I made a huge mistake," Hammoud told Judge Mullen just before the new sentence was announced. "I'd betrayed the country that gave me a lot. I'm sincerely sorry. I paid a big price for this. I lost everything but hope and faith."
Then he told the judge "Give me a chance to go back to my elderly mother and get a wife and have a family."
Hammoud, 37, has already spent about a decade behind bars. In 2002, he was sentenced to 155 years in prison.
During that five-week trial, prosecutors said Hammoud was a member of a Hezbollah cell in Charlotte that smuggled millions of dollars worth of cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan and sent some of the illegal proceeds to Lebanon to help finance Hezbollah's military operations.
Hammoud was convicted of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization and 13 other crimes, including cigarette smuggling, racketeering and money laundering.
This week's hearing focused on whether donations he made to the militant group Hezbollah were directed to the organization's terrorist efforts, or to help orphans and poor people in Lebanon.
Attorneys for Hammoud argued that he did not send money abroad to support terrorist activity.
Hammoud was the first person convicted under a 1996 law that prohibits aid to designated terrorist groups. Prosecuting suspects under that law has since become a key tactic in the war on terror.
Prosecutors contend Hammoud ran a cell in Charlotte that raised money for Hezbollah, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.
Defense attorney James McLoughlin said Wednesday that the small amount of money Hammoud sent overseas was not for terrorism. Hammoud's attorneys called former CIA officer Robert Baer to testify, and he said Hezbollah is broken into two distinct parts – one that provides social services in the region and the other devoted to military activities.
Baer said the military side doesn't publicly raise money and gets its money from Iran. David Brown, the federal prosecutor, contended that the military side does raise money and noted several U.S. indictments over the past year focused on fund-raising for Hezbollah's military activity.
Hezbollah was responsible for the 1983 suicide attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 Americans, prosecutors say, "and ushered in the modern age of suicide attacks."
Hammoud's case is among hundreds that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to courts across the country following a ruling in 2005 to abandon nearly two decades of federal sentencing practices.
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