Fifty Extra Years for Assaulting Two Prison Officers — and a Family Still Arguing Over Which Country Holds Him
El Bahnasawy, a Mississauga man already serving a 40-year sentence for terror-related charges in the U.S., was sentenced to an additional 50 years in federal prison for assaulting two corrections officers, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced.
The earlier 40-year term dates to 2018, when he was sentenced after pleading guilty to terror charges.
His family and U.S. experts have spent the better part of a decade arguing for his transfer to a Canadian prison because of his mental health.
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A transfer campaign that has run for the better part of a decade is not a paperwork problem. It is a dispute about which prison system is responsible for the mental health needs at the centre of the request — and one that keeps being deferred rather than settled.
The framing gets harder to hold when you read the rest of the release: a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and ISIS was also found in his prison cell, according to it. Corrections Canada's position is that it cannot comment on specific cases but that all international transfer applications are carefully considered — and careful consideration is not a timeline.