Bloomington man sentenced to 40 years in prison in child pornography case involving at least 22 children

A federal judge this week imposed one of the longest prison sentences for child pornography in Minnesota’s recent history, sending a Bloomington man to 40 years in prison for abusing at least 22 children and temporarily fleeing abroad to avoid prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank, noting that he has tried hundreds of such cases throughout his career, on Thursday singled out 31-year-old Ibrahim Ghassan Sleyman from many previous cases because it “stands out from other cases” due to the severity of his crimes and the practical sexual abuse of some of his victims.

Sleyman, who pleaded guilty last year to multiple counts of child pornography and enticement of minors, used Snapchat and other messaging apps from October 2020 to March 2023 to solicit sexually explicit images and sex acts from boys and girls ages 9 to 16, court records show.

Prosecutors said he solicited an underage victim to make child pornography and later have sex with him in exchange for drugs and other gifts.

Sleyman fled to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in 2022, just days after being questioned by law enforcement. While there, he continued to engage in sexually explicit conversations with minors in the United States and attempted to influence what his victims would tell authorities investigating him.

One year after his escape to the United Arab Emirates, Sleyman was extradited and taken into custody by the FBI.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hillary Taylor said in a memo to the court that the investigation is ongoing “and it is believed that dozens of minor victims remain to be identified.”

Although Sleyman was charged with crimes that occurred nearly four years ago, Taylor wrote in a sentencing memo that Sleyman had “identified, groomed, and sexually abused multiple minor victims both online and in person” since at least 2017.

She said he had searched for children in Minnesota and other states and countries; one victim obtained a restraining order for harassment, but that did not stop Sleyman’s pursuit.

Taylor wrote that investigators reviewed “tens of thousands of lines of chat messages on multiple Snapchat accounts” and found that Sleyman repeatedly resorted to scripts tailored to the age, interests and gender of victims. She said he lied about his age and often assumed the identity of a male victim who was abused in North Dakota at age 15.

“He established false relationships with minors to obtain child pornography containing those images, and his online exploitation of minors laid the foundation for his ultimate goal: Sleyman wanted to sexually abuse minors,” Taylor wrote.

From August 2021 to July 2022, according to court documents, Sleyman forced a young girl to meet with him for sex. The victim told authorities she was 13 at the time of their first encounter and that the sexual assaults continued at hotels in Sherburne, Anoka and St. Louis counties, as well as at Sleyman’s Bloomington apartment.

Sleyman continued to pursue the girl despite her parents’ intervention and police involvement, including picking her up at night from her home and a family cabin. Late one night in July 2022, Elk River police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle while Sleyman was with the girl. According to court documents, he lied to police that he was the girl’s uncle and was taking her home.

After fleeing to Abu Dhabi, Sleyman continued to message the girl despite a restraining order. When she did not respond as requested, he made a public social media post attempting to embarrass her with false accusations and tagging her local high school.

Sleyman also stalked a 15-year-old girl who was reported missing by her family in 2022. The girl later told authorities that she felt obligated to give in to his demands for sex because he gave her marijuana and a place to stay after she ran away from home. She, too, received messages from Sleyman in Abu Dhabi telling her not to talk to police or give them false information during an interview.

“Sleyman’s manipulation and exploitation go far beyond that of a typical defendant in child sex abuse cases,” Taylor wrote. “Here, Sleyman coordinated on a large scale to continually develop online relationships with children in various states to facilitate his manipulation of them both online and in person.”

Hillary Parsons, an attorney representing Sleyman, urged Frank to impose a 25-year sentence, while federal prosecutors asked for 45 years. Parsons noted that the case was Sleyman’s first encounter with the criminal justice system and that he has “expressed extreme remorse for his conduct and acknowledged that his actions caused untold harm to his victims.”

Parsons wrote that Sleyman grew up in an “extremely conservative” household in the United Arab Emirates, “where he never developed the full social skills he needed to become a grown man.”

Parsons said Sleyman emigrated to the United States at age 19 and moved to Moorhead, Minnesota. She said he struggled in college because of “mental health issues and difficulties in school” and “spent an excessive amount of time playing online video games because he had difficulty making real-world contacts.”

Parsons said Sleyman’s online activity “deteriorated” when he dropped out of school and he “did not have meaningful adult relationships.”

“He is in desperate need of therapy and treatment to address his sexual issues as he is unable to adequately articulate his transition from a lonely, depressed young adult to a man seeking sexual attention from minors online,” Parsons wrote.