A life sentence for contempt?

This article from the New York Sun spotlights a remarkable sentencing recommendation coming from the feds in a high-profile terrorism-related case:

Federal prosecutors are urging that a Palestinian Arab activist spend the rest of his life in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Hamas links in America.

Earlier this year, a jury in Chicago convicted Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, of contempt of court and obstruction of justice. However, jurors acquitted Ashqar of participating in a racketeering conspiracy to support Hamas, a terrorist group responsible for a string of bombings and other attacks that killed hundreds in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Despite the jury’s decision to acquit Ashqar on the most serious charge, prosecutors filed a legal brief Wednesday arguing that a probation officer’s recommendation of a life sentence for contempt was “correctly calculated.”

“Defendant Ashqar remains defiant, and to this day keeps locked within himself information and evidence directly relating to the domestic and international support network through which the Hamas terrorist organization perpetuated its long reign of terror, and in the process has allowed the directors and facilitators of that reign of terror to evade … legal sanction,” the prosecution team from the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote.  “That defiance reflects defendant Ashqar to be a continuing threat who is not capable of rehabilitation.”

There is no statutory limit to Ashqar’s sentence because he was convicted of criminal contempt, a crime for which Congress has set no maximum punishment.  Other alleged Hamas activists who lied to or defied courts have received sentences of a year or two in prison. Obstruction of justice carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.