More than 10 years added to sentence of man who plotted to detonate car bomb outside Chicago bar

A man who plotted to detonate a massive car bomb outside a Chicago bar has been resentenced to 27 years in prison after a federal appeals found his initial sentence too lenient.

Adel Daoud was handed the new prison term on Friday at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse more than three years after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his initial 16-year sentence “fell outside the range of reasonable sentences" and removed the judge in the case.

The three-judge appeals panel said that U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman had “downplayed the extreme seriousness” of the government’s terrorism case against Daoud and had given “short shrift” to the need to protect the public.

The new sentence was handed down by Judge Matthew Kennelly, who took over from Coleman.

In his ruling, Kennelly said he believed the appellate court had misinterpreted some of Coleman's reasons for reaching her decision, including Coleman’s impression of Daoud as an awkward teenager who could be easily influenced.

Kennelly said he was skeptical that Daoud would have been able to carry out the attack on his own, without the assistance of undercover federal agents who were investigating him.

But the judge said he did not agree with Daoud’s assertion at the sentencing hearing Friday that he had been entrapped by government.

"He pushed the button," Kennelly said of Daoud’s action to activate a detonator he believed would trigger a 1,000-pound fertilizer bomb.

Kennelly also said he doubted that Daoud could have carried out plans to kill the informant who had set up him. While in prison, Daoud tried to solicit his cellmate -- a convicted gang member who was working as an FBI informant -- to help set up the murder.

But, again, Kennelly noted that Daoud had made the attempt.

"That is an incredibly serious crime," the judge said.

Kennelly noted a third case against Daoud: Trying to stab a fellow prisoner with a sharpened toothbrush because the inmate had drawn a picture of the Prophet Mohammad.

The judge said this was “in some ways the scariest of the three" because Daoud had taken the action on his own.

In each case, the judge said Daoud had decided to carry out acts of extreme violence.

Prosecutors had asked for Daoud to be sentenced to 40 years in prison, arguing that older adults are less likely to re-offend and Daoud would at that point be in his 50s.

Kennelly said he “didn’t think it would take that long” for Daoud to rehabilitate himself, but also ordered Daoud placed on supervised released for the rest of his life once he is freed, which will subject him to checks of his home by probation officers and monitoring of his activities.

Daoud was 18 when the FBI began investigating him after he posted messages online saying he wanted to engage in “Jihad” and wanted to kill Americans, who he believed were enemies of Islam.

In 2012, Daoud, then living in west suburban Hillside, drove downtown with an FBI agent in a truck that smelled of gasoline and a fake bomb in the back as part of an undercover sting.

Daoud entered a specialized guilty plea in 2018 and admitted to facts about his arrest but denied culpability, which Coleman allowed over the objection of prosecutors.

Daoud later tried to take the guilty plea back, which Kennelly had earlier denied. Daoud, representing himself, said he intended to appeal.