(CHICAGO) Adel Daoud has been locked up for nearly four years, ever since he allegedly tried to blow up a downtown Chicago bar.
Now, with his trial still at least six months away, he apparently thinks the feds want him dead, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
“They’re going to take me downstairs and they’re going to cut my head off,” Daoud said.
The Hillside man made the comment to his sister in a recorded phone call last month while he languished at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Daoud’s attorney played it Thursday during the first day of a hearing to determine if Daoud, 22, is competent to stand trial on charges he plotted a “massive” jihadist attack in September 2012.
Daoud has already complained about the role of Free Masons and the Illuminati in his prosecution. But Thursday’s hearing revealed that Daoud also drafted a will predicting he would be beheaded in a satanic ritual at the MCC; wrote a letter to President Barack Obama demanding a “two-hour visit as soon as possible”; sought a plea deal that would allow him to go overseas and fight for the Free Syrian Army; and may have taken the Charlie Hebdo attack as a sign he should murder a fellow inmate over a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad — after having already assaulted him once.
He took Obama’s recent visit to a mosque as a direct response to his letter and a slap in the face. He also suspects the judge presiding over his case is a member of the Illuminati who ordered his cellmate’s execution. He has even referred to her in a court filing as a literal reptile and lizard “with make-up!”
Still, Richart DeMier, the doctor who evaluated Daoud last spring at a federal facility in Missouri, insisted from the witness stand that Daoud does not suffer from a mental illness that would prevent him from helping his attorneys or grasping the ramifications of his trial. He dismissed much of Daoud’s outlandish behavior as an attempt to be “provocative.”
“He had a very sound, factual understanding of how the legal system is supposed to work,” DeMier said.
Psychiatrist Stephen N. Xenakis later offered an opposing opinion, testifying that Daoud suffers from a delusional disorder and is not competent to stand trial.
Daoud has spent most of his adult life in federal custody, and much of that in solitary confinement. He allegedly pushed the trigger on a fake car bomb given to him by a federal agent in September 2012 as he plotted an attack “that’s gonna make it in the news.” He planted the inert bomb outside a downtown bar, the feds say. He later allegedly plotted from jail to have the federal agent killed, and last year prosecutors say he attacked a fellow inmate.
Repeatedly, his trial has been delayed, most recently by concerns over his mental state. U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman even complained early this year that “this is not justice” before she agreed to push his trial back further, to Feb. 7.
Daoud now opposes his attorneys’ attempt to find him incompetent. But he still greeted lawyer Thomas Anthony Durkin with a fist-bump in the courtroom. He is expected to take the stand Friday as the hearing continues. He wore an orange jumpsuit and leg shackles as he watched from the defense table Thursday. He took notes, occasionally smiled at family in the gallery and appeared taken aback when a witness suggested he didn’t have what it takes to become a Muslim scholar.
In a recorded July phone call between Daoud and Durkin played during the hearing, Daoud described his incarceration as “being a hostage” and said “God’s gonna save me through a miracle, or they’re gonna kill me.”
“They would put it on the news like I’m fine, and they would kill me,” Daoud said.
Finally, before the call ended, he told his lawyer he had one question:
“You think Donald Trump is gonna accept my endorsement?”
