"South Park" Jihadi Was '08 Obama Volunteer

MAY 20--The radicalized knucklehead convicted of threatening the lives of the “South Park” creators signed up as a volunteer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, but by the time Election Day arrived he had concluded it would be a violation of Islamic law to vote in the U.S. election, according to court records.

Wannabe jihadi Zachary Chesser, 21, was sentenced earlier this year to 25 years in federal prison following his guilty plea to making the “South Park” threats as well as providing material support to terrorists (in this case the Somali guerilla group Al-Shabaab).

Chesser, pictured in the mug shot at right, has cooperated with FBI agents and helped prosecutors building a case against Jessie Curtis Morton, with whom Chesser operated the extremist Revolution Muslim web site. Morton was named last week in a felony criminal complaint charging him with threatening the lives of Matt Stone and Trey Parker over a “South Park” episode that included the Prophet Muhammad dressed in a bear suit.

In U.S. District Court filings, Chesser’s lawyer and family members described him as a passionate young man whose interests pinballed from subject to subject (sports, Japanese anime, break dancing, heavy metal, Buddhism, Islam) and often turned on a dime. His attorney reported that despite Chesser’s “increasing devotion to a rigid form of Islam,” he “volunteered to campaign in the 2008 presidential election.” However, “by the time the election came on November 4, 2008, Mr. Chesser had become convinced it would be a violation of Islamic law to vote.”

In a character letter, Chesser’s stepmother recalled him “ranting about how the Koran says he can’t support Obama even though he had signed up to help with the campaign."

Chesser apologized in a “Statement of Responsibility” for the “harm and pain I have caused,” noting that he was “ashamed and bewildered that I was capable of doing it.” Chesser added that, “I have always been a pacificist” and “The jihadi ideology I was drawn into was contrary to everything I had grown up thinking and believing.”

Before this revelation, Chesser--now imprisoned at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois--viewed the “South Park” controversy as an opportunity to further disseminate radical messages. In fact, in a wiretapped April 2010 conversation with Morton, Chesser reported that the term “Revolution Muslim” was then the “68th most searched term on Google,” according to the Morton criminal complaint. (3 pages)