The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that “one of the men charged earlier this year with supporting the terror group ISIS and conspiring to recruit others to a ‘martyrdom operations cell’ has agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Boston.
Nicholas Alexander Rovinski, 25, of Warwick, RI, was charged in June 2015 with conspiracy to support ISIS. He was later indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, and obstruction of justice, and faces life in prison. He is slated to plead guilty Thursday.”
He faces life in prison, but he is only going to get fifteen years. The government is working on a plea agreement with Rovinski, solely in order to ensure that he serves a lengthy sentence. There is a significant difference between Rovinski and his fellow jihad conspirator, David Wright: Rovinski came into the plot later in time, and played less of a role. The deal requires him to receive a sentence of at least 15 years if he pleads guilty to two counts.
The maximum sentence for aiding ISIS is 20 years. The first count in Rovinski’s case involves the initial charge against him: conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS. Prosecutors are unlikely to get a guilty verdict on that one, because while Rahim and Wright were both in touch with ISIS operatives in Syria, Rovinski was not. He reportedly has cerebral palsy and walks with a limp, and is very limited in speech and movement. Wright, not Rovinski, was the ringleader of the plan to behead me. The evidence is overwhelming against Wright.
In conversations that were recorded by law enforcement officials, Rovinski says very little. Rahim decided that he didn’t want to wait until July 4th, which was initially the day they had chosen for their jihad attack. He, of course, eventually grew so impatient that he discarded the idea of traveling from Boston to New York to behead me, and suddenly decided to kill a police officer in Boston instead. In the conversations, Wright exhorts Rahim to stay firm, very much like the Blind Sheikh in the plotting of the 1993 jihad attack against the World Trade Center. Wright is speaking constantly. Rovinski is hardly heard.
I am cautious. Rovinski wrote two letters from prison to Wright. He was still calling for beheading and clearly was a convinced and committed jihad terrorist, eager to murder for Allah.
Authorities are hiding the fact that Nicholas Rovinski has left Islam and returned to Catholicism, but I was told this by the prosecutor in the case, Stephanie Siegmann. The prosecutor has told me that he has not only renounced Islam, but done so publicly, and has returned to the Catholic Church. If that is true, he will not be part of the privileged Muslim population in prison, and will not receive the perks they receive (better food, more time outside the cell for prayers, etc.). He may also be in danger from Muslim inmates who want to enforce Islam’s death penalty for apostasy.
The Rahim/Wright/Rovinski jihad plot was to behead me, but of course, Boston Globe reporter Milton J. Valencia (milton.valencia@globe.com) never bothered to ask me for comment. It’s typical of an enemedia that is only interested in allowing pro-jihad, pro-sharia voices to be heard.
Bottom line. If it were up to me these people would be designated enemy combatants. This is not a law enforcement issue. This is war. But until we get a Commander-in-Chief who understands this, we have to go with what we’ve got.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter.
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