Cab driver who tried to help Islamic State gets 11 years

A taxi driver caught helping a friend try to join the Islamic State group during an FBI sting has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Twenty-six-year-old Mahmoud Elhassan of Woodbridge, Virginia, was arrested last year after he drove Joseph Farrokh to the Richmond airport, where he planned to begin a trip to join the Islamic State in Syria.

Prosecutors say Elhassan, who started a prayer table outside the Verizon Center in Washington seeking to proselytise others to Islam, offered himself online as a "sleeper cell" to overseas radicals.

The government sought a term closer to the 28-year maximum at a hearing Friday in Alexandria, Virginia.
 

Elhassan's lawyers asked for a term of four to six years. Farrokh was previously sentenced to 8and a half years in prison.