A wannabe ISIS terrorist who repeatedly stabbed a FBI agent at his Staten Island home was resentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday – after an appeals court ruled his previous penalty of 17 years was too lenient.
Farheed Mumuni’s new sentence was handed down by US Chief District Judge Margo Brodie in Manhattan Federal Court, despite objections from prosecutors who called for Mumuni to spend 85 years in prison.
The victim, special agent Kevin Coughlin, told the court he is still reeling from the 2015 attack. Coughlin was stabbed while he was searching Mumuni’s home with other agents.
“It is an experience that has continued to affect me and my family,” Coughlin testified. “My wife still gets upset when she thinks about how close she came to being a widow and a single mother.”
The defendant — once suspected of stabbing a 9-year-old Staten Island boy as part of a terror “audition” — said he had been rehabilitating himself behind bars, in an appeal to the court.
“I’ve been trying day in and day out since then to change myself and be better,” Mumuni, 27, said.
Mumuni’s attorney Anthony Ricco said his client had been well behaved in jail and is using his education to help other incarcerated men.
Mumuni was initially sentenced to 17 years in prison for the attack before an appeals court decided the sentencing was too lenient. Gabriella Bass“The defendant has been involved in a wide range of academic programs at the jail,” Ricco said.
In 2018, Mumuni was sentenced to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to a terrorism charge for allegedly carrying out the attack on behalf of ISIS.
After his first sentence, which was also handed down by Brodie, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York appealed the decision to higher court, which sided with the prosecutor’s office.
Coughlin addressed Mumuni at that hearing before he was given the wrist-slap sentence.
“I’ve never met you. I’ve never wronged you, yet you tried to kill me,” he said.
The knife Mumuni used to attack the FBI agent.
“This was not a battlefield, this was the city of New York and you tried to kill me,” Coughlin added.
In an opinion, 2nd Circuit Court Judge Jose A. Cabranes said the sentence was “shockingly low” and one that could damage the US justice system.
Brodie’s “clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence leaves us with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed — a mistake that resulted in a shockingly low sentence that, if upheld, would damage the administration of justice in our country,” the opinion states.
