Former Minnesota ISIS member who says he regrets fighting with them in Syria faces up to 12 years behind bars when he's sentenced today

A Minnesota man who once fought for ISIS in Syria is scheduled to be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison - after he said he regrets joining the terrorist group.

Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, 27, surrendered to U.S.-backed rebels in 2019 and was held under harsh conditions at the Ghweran prison in Hasakah. 

He returned to the U.S. in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization.

Prosecutors have recommended 12 years behind bars for Al-Madioum who is expected sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery on Wednesday.

'I joined a death cult, and it was the biggest mistake of my life,' Al-Madioum said in a letter to the judge.

Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, 27, is scheduled to be sentenced up to 12 years in prison for fighting with ISIS and said he regrets joining the terrorist group

'I've been changed by life experience: by the treachery I endured as a member of ISIS, by becoming a father of four, a husband, an amputee, a prisoner of war, a malnourished supplicant, by seeing the pain and anguish and gnashing of teeth that terrorism causes, the humiliation, the tears, the shame.' 

The Justice Department said Al-Madioum, a native of Morocco and naturalized U.S. citizen, was recruited by the terrorist group online when he was 18-years-old.

He slipped away from his family on a visit to their native Morocco in 2015. Making his way to Syria, he became a soldier for ISIS, until he was maimed in an explosion in Iraq. Unable to fight, he used his computer skills to serve the group. 

The defense claimed Al-Madioum joined ISIS because he wanted to help Muslims who he believed were being slaughtered by Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in that country's civil war. 

ISIS recruiters persuaded him 'to test his faith and become a real Muslim.'

'I will be very honest with you, I thought I was going to come and help people,' Al-Madioum told CBS News from the Ghweran prison. 

Al-Madioum was a fighter for less than two months before he lost his right arm below the elbow in the explosion that also left him with two badly broken legs and other severe injuries. He may still require amputation of one leg, the defense said.

He surrendered to U.S.-backed rebels in 2019 and was held under harsh conditions at the Ghweran prison (pictured) in Hasakah until he was transferred to the US in 2020

While recuperating in 2016, he met his first wife Fatima, an ISIS widow who already had a son and bore him another in 2017. They lived in poverty and under constant airstrikes. 

He was unable to work, and his stipend from IS stopped in 2018. They lived in a makeshift tent.

He married his second wife, Fozia, in 2018. She also was an ISIS widow and already had a 4-year-old daughter. They had separated by early 2019. 

He heard later she and their daughter together had died. The first wife also is dead, having been shot in front of Al-Madioum by either rebel forces or an IS fighter in 2019, the defense said.

The day after that shooting, he walked with his sons and surrendered to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which held him under conditions the defense described as 'heinous' for 18 months until the FBI returned him to the U.S.

As for Al-Madioum's children, the defense memo said they were eventually found in a Syrian orphanage and his parents will be their foster parents when they arrive in the U.S.

Prosecutors acknowledge that Al-Madioum has provided useful assistance to U..S. authorities in several national security investigations and prosecutions, that he accepted responsibility for his crime and pleaded guilty promptly on his return to the U.S. 

Al-Madioum, a native of Morocco and naturalized U.S. citizen, was recruited by the terrorist group online when he was 18-years-old

'The defendant did much more than harbor extremist beliefs,' prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. 'He chose violent action by taking up arms for ISIS.'

Al-Madioum was among several Minnesotans suspected of leaving the U.S. to join the Islamic State group, along with thousands of fighters from other countries worldwide. 

Roughly three dozen people are known to have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Somalia or Syria. In 2016, nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges of conspiring to join ISIS.

Al-Madioum is one of the relatively few Americans who've been brought back to the U.S. who actually fought for the group. 

According to a defense sentencing memo, he's one of 11 adults as of 2023 to be formally repatriated to the U.S. from the conflict in Syria and Iraq to face charges for terrorist-related crimes and alleged affiliations with ISIS. Others received sentences ranging from four years to life plus 70 years.