Chicago, December 12: IIT alumnus Vikram Buddhi was awarded 57 months imprisonment by a Chicago court for posting hate message to the then President George W Bush. The Senior Judge James T Moody also sentenced Buddhi three years of supervised release.
Buddhi, who was arrested in 2006, was sentenced by senior Judge James T Moody after being convicted of making threats to Bush, the then Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives, and calling for bombings of US infrastructure.
The 38-year old Phd student of Purdue University, will have to spend an additional three years under “supervised release” under the supervision of a probation officer, the court said.
He can though appeal the sentence in a Chicago court within 10 days of this judgement. Since he has already been in prison since April 2006, the months are likely to be deducted from his sentence term.
Buddhi, who represented himself during the sentence hearing after firing his lawyer, said earlier that he was given the short end of the stick, and claimed the trial had been unfair.
Before the sentencing Buddhi submitted to the judge that he had got “ineffective assistance” of the counsel and said it was the “gravest error of justice”.
Buddhi had yesterday fired his lawyer Arlington Foley for not discussing the case properly, and said would “involuntarily represent himself” at the hearing.
Buddhi has been in jail since 2006 and Foley said the Bureau of Prisons would take that into account before determining the total time that he would now be required to spend in a US prison.
Typically if somebody is sentenced to 57 months, he would serve approximately 85 per cent of that time and “most likely” would be given credit for the months he has already spent in jail,” Foley said adding that Buddhi has already spent a couple of years in jail and that could be deducted from his sentence of 57 months.
After completing his sentence, Buddhi could also be deported to India. While the deportation would be handled by a different authority in Chicago, Foley said if Buddhi is a candidate for deportation, the fact that “he is a convicted and the nature of the charge against him would weigh very heavily when the authorities determine whether he should be deported”.
During the two-day sentencing hearing, Buddhi argue that since he had got “ineffective assistance” of the counsel and faced the “gravest error of justice”, his sentence should be shortened. “I got the short end of the stick,” he added.
Fighting his own case, the 38 year old Phd student from Purdue University tried hard to convince the judge and put up several arguments, even at the cost of making Moody impatient.
Moody ruled that he did not find the defendant’s “arguments and the mitigating factors he presented persuasive enough” to give him a shorter sentence.
Not giving up, Buddhi repeatedly argued before the judge that that the messages posted on the internet were not “threats” but “just opinions” and if any unbiased persons had read the mails, they would notice that there is “no intention of inflicting any harm”. “Every person has a right to his or her opinion,” he said.
Anybody who goes to online message boards should read a warning that tells people that the messages are just opinion of the person posting them and should not be taken seriously for any other purposes, Buddhi argued.
He said he did not have anything against the US and “I support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Those messages were posted just to challenge the mind, to cajole, to see what the effect would be if a different picture is presented.
US troops are killing Iraqis, Afghansitanis and the bad guys. If instead of saying US troops are killing Iraqis, it is said that Iraqis are killing US troops, the picture changes and becomes very dramatic”.
He mentioned news reports of “US soldiers raping and killing young women” and how people are being “blindfolded” and torture tactics being used. “But just to challenge the mind, you turn the picture around. Many people don’t view the picture from the other end,” he said.
He stated he had a good educational background and had won awards while he was teaching mathematics at Purdue. Trying to strengthen his argument, Buddhi said he has many anglosaxan friends, had assisted war veterans, had never been to Iraq and attended the premier Indian Institute of Technology from where other graduates also come to the US.
—Agencies