In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17-3325 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ABDELLA AHMAD TOUNISI, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division No. 13 CR 328-1 — Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED AUGUST 7, 2018 — DECIDED AUGUST 21, 2018 ____________________ Before KANNE, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. Federal agents thwarted Abdella Tounisi’s plans to travel to Syria to join Jabhat al-Nusrah, a militant ter- rorist group associated with al-Qaida, when they arrested him at an airport gate while awaiting a flight to Turkey. He pleaded guilty to knowingly attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and the district court sentenced him to the statutory maximum of 15 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. Tounisi argues on 2 No. 17-3325 appeal that the district judge procedurally erred at sentencing in four ways: (1) he did not sufficiently address Tounisi’s mit- igating arguments; (2) he did not adequately explain the length of imprisonment; (3) he failed to properly consider the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors; and (4) he did not adequately ex- plain the length of supervised release. Because the judge did not make any of these errors, we affirm the judgment. I. Background By early 2013, Tounisi had decided to join Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria. He had watched videos of and read articles about its violent operations and its links to al-Qaida. His parents learned of his plans and attempted to stop him by taking away his passport in January. Undeterred, Tounisi ap- plied for an expedited passport, reporting that his previous one had been lost and that he intended to travel to Jordan. He also opened a post-office mailbox just to receive the new pass- port. Later that month he visited a purported recruitment website for Jabhat al-Nusrah and emailed the listed contact person, who was actually an FBI agent, about his strategy to travel to Syria by flying to Istanbul, Turkey, then bussing to Gaziantep, a Turkish city bordering Syria. He explained that he would seize the opportunity to attain martyrdom if it pre- sented itself. Tounisi, then 18 years old, solidified his plans in April 2013. He bought a ticket for a flight on April 19 to Istanbul. The day before his flight, the “recruiter” sent him a bus ticket for Istanbul to Gaziantep and promised that “brothers” would be waiting to take him to a training camp in Syria. Tounisi responded by describing what he would be wearing when he arrived. As scheduled, he went to O’Hare Interna- tional Airport to catch his flight to Turkey. He made it as far No. 17-3325 3 as the airport gate before federal agents approached, ques- tioned, and ultimately arrested him. Tounisi was charged with knowingly attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, see 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1), and making false statements in connection with an offense involv- ing ...
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