Terror Suspect with Autism

This week, AP reported:

A young New York man caught boarding a plane on his way to Yemen to fight with an al-Qaida affiliate is a mixed-up teenager who was diagnosed with autism and didn't understand the gravity of what he was doing, his attorney told The Associated Press.

Justin Kaliebe, 18, pleaded guilty in a secret federal court proceeding in February to a charge of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before he is sentenced Sept. 27. His condition could be considered in determining his sentence; he faces up to 30 years in prison.

"Justin Kaliebe is a gentle, misguided, autistic teenager who does not have the ability to fully understand the magnitude and consequences of his actions," defense attorney Anthony La Pinta said in a statement to the AP.

La Pinta, who joined the defense team after the guilty plea was entered, said he has medical documents showing that Kaliebe was diagnosed with autism as a young child, but he would not release them.

Authorities have declined to say why the plea was entered in secret, though the move could mean Kaliebe was cooperating in the investigation when it was at a sensitive stage.

Autism Speaks reports:

"Planned violence is very rare in autism and certainly not characteristic,” says psychiatrist Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele. Dr. Veenstra-VanderWeele works with children and teens who have autism at the Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network center at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville.
...
“As a spectrum disorder, autism is quite variable,” Dr. Veenstra-VanderWeele says. “But planned violence overall is less common, not more common, in people with autism. When stories like this emerge, it’s sometimes tempting to link a single person's actions to a larger group of people who share something in common.”

Most media reports have not made such implications – a possible reflection of increased awareness and understanding of autism spectrum disorders.

Autism and Yemen

Previous posts have discussed international perspectives on autism.  Emily Willingham writes at Forbes:

In non-USian parts of the world, though, autism doesn’t necessarily get this level of attention, much less acceptance, despite the fact that autistic people are everywhere. One of the largest epidemiological studies of autism identified it in 2.64%% of South Korean schoolchildren, and anecdotal assertions to the contrary, autism does exist in countries like Cambodia. Autistic people also live in Yemen, where a lack of awareness can seriously affect outcomes. As Yemeni mother Fam Um Ahmed said in an interview with Sadeq Al-Wesabi, writing for the Yemen Times:

Although I’m educated, I had no idea about autism, and what I’d heard about it was that it’s a horrible and destroying thing. I didn’t realize at that time that my child was suffering from autism until the doctor told me,” she said.

 ...

Yemen doesn’t seem to have a large, well-funded national organization to litter the country with blue puzzle pieces and ask for your donation at a Toys ‘R’ Us checkout. Its media don’t appear to carry the obsession that the US media have with autism–in fact, a search on “autism” at the Yemen Times turned up three articles. A search at NBC.com? That gets you 721 hits. In the US, that level of coverage starts to become background noise. In Yemen, awareness–or a lack of it–really does matter.

It’s not a huge shock that we in the United States tend to be US-centric when we talk about anything–politics, religion, global climate change, autism. But as we spend our time and energy here arguing the finer points of autism causation, writing alarmist stories about every scientific study that mentions autism–whether it studied it or not–, and engaging in internecine battles in the autism community, autistic people walk around all parts of the globe, needing resources and support and useful interventions as much–or even more–than autistics in the United States. Perhaps it’s time more of us became aware of that.