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A Twin Cities man who joined the Islamic State group a decade ago left prison Tuesday after providing extensive help to the government in prosecuting other terrorism cases. In a rare move, a federal judge in Minneapolis cut Abelhamid Al-Madioum’s 10-year sentence to time served with 15 years of supervised release.
Al-Madioum, 28, was born in Morocco and grew up in St. Louis Park as a naturalized American citizen in a culturally Muslim but non-religious family. After getting radicalized online, he absconded from a family trip to Morocco, traveled to Syria, and joined ISIS.
In a 2024 letter to U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery, Al-Madioum said that age 18 he was “young, ignorant and misguided” and fell for ISIS propaganda.
“What appealed to me was defending civilians against Syrian President Assad’s brutal chemical weapons and barrel bombs, redistributing vast oil wealth so that no one lived in poverty and ruling with an Islamic justice free from the corruption and bribery that plagues most Muslim countries,” Al-Madioum wrote. “That was the ISIS vision, and it was all a farce.”
Al-Madioum trained and fought as an ISIS soldier. But soon after arriving in Syria he was severely injured in an airstrike. A few weeks later he lost his right arm in an explosion.
ISIS, which had a famously extensive bureaucracy, gave Al-Madioum a desk job in Mosul, Iraq. He had two marriages while overseas. Fatima, his first wife, “was shot and killed in front of him and their sons” in early 2019 either by Syrian Democratic Forces or an ISIS member, according to court documents in his case. The next day Al-Madioum went with the boys and surrendered to the SDF.
Al-Madioum spent 18 months in a squalid Syrian jail with thousands of other ISIS prisoners, where he gave an interview to CBS News. A year later, the FBI picked him up and sent him back to the U.S. to be prosecuted. Al-Madioum’s sons, who spent five years in a detention camp for relatives of ISIS members, now live with their grandparents in suburban Minneapolis.
Manny Atwal, Al-Madioum’s defense attorney, wrote in a filing on Monday that her client learned recently that two daughters who he thought had been killed in Syria may still be alive.
In 2021 Al-Madioum pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization. After delays, Montgomery sentenced him in 2024 to 10 years in federal prison. He avoided the 20-year maximum term after promising to cooperate on other terrorism investigations.
Al-Madioum soon met with agents at the Sherburne County Jail to review photos of potential targets. Investigators later took him to Rochester, New York, where he helped with another case and took part in many meetings without his lawyer present.
He also testified at a trial in Michigan at which jurors in early June convicted a suburban Detroit man of trying to join ISIS and building a bomb in his basement.
Atwal argued that because of her client’s extensive cooperation, he should be allowed to leave prison. The government agreed, and Montgomery scheduled a re-sentencing hearing, a rare move in the federal court system.
While most sentencing hearings are solemn proceedings, Al-Madioum, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, exchanged waves and smiles with his school-age sons, who watched from the gallery with their grandparents. Al-Madioum has been visiting regularly by video with his parents and children. The younger boy briefly showed off a pair of sunglasses for his father.
When Montgomery took the bench, she greeted the children.
“Good to see you, I bet that’s your little brother,” the judge said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter explained that Al-Madioum provide “substantial assistance” with the Michigan trial and another case in New York, but that he couldn’t discuss the New York matter because the investigation is active.
“If you were a school teacher grading his cooperation, would you give him an A?” Montgomery asked.
“Yes absolutely,” the prosecutor replied. Winter added that he had no sense that Al-Madioum was holding anything back.
Standing at the lectern, Al-Madioum told Montgomery that he wants to help de-radicalize others who’ve fallen victim to extremist propaganda by “leveraging my credibility as a former ISIS member to push people away from that path.”
“He wants to give back. He knows what he did in 2015 — lying to those folks in the back and joining ISIS — was the worst decision he ever made,” Atwal said.
Atwal argued for Al-Madioum to be released to his family, but Montgomery, siding with the government, ordered Al-Madioum to spend up to six months in a halfway house, in part to ease the adjustment period with his parents and sons. The judge said that Al-Madioum should have regular visits with his parents and sons.
“We’re going to do this in stages so everybody gets used to it,” Montgomery said. “I want you to be there without being there 24/7.”
Al-Madioum’s new sentence also includes 15 years of supervised release.
“You have a lot you can educate people on,” Montgomery added. “You have an opportunity through this mess you got yourself in to do a lot of good.”
Montgomery said that she plans to retire next year, and urged Al-Madioum to stay in touch.
“I’m fascinated by what the future holds for you and I’m sure it’s going to be good stuff,” she said.
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