Foreign national sentenced to more than 2 decades in prison for mailing ricin to Trump in 2020

HOUSTON, United States (AA) - A dual Canadian and French national was sentenced Thursday to nearly 22 years in prison for mailing ricin-laced letters to then-President Donald Trump and law enforcement officials, the US Attorney's office in Washington, D.C. announced.

Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 56, was handed a 262-month prison term for sending the letters to the White House and eight law enforcement officials in the state of Texas in September 2020. The letters contained homemade ricin -- a toxin made from castor beans that can potentially kill or sicken.

Ferrier pleaded guilty Jan. 25 to "prohibitions with respect to biological weapons" in two separate criminal cases -- one in the District of Columbia and the other in the Southern District of Texas.

Court documents said Ferrier admitted she made ricin at her residence in Quebec, Canada and placed the toxin in envelopes containing letters that she wrote to Trump at the White House as well as to the Texas officials.

Authorities said Ferrier had been detained for nearly 10 weeks in Texas during the spring of 2019 and she believed officials there were connected to her period of detention. Then, in September 2020, Ferrier used her Twitter account and posted that someone should “please shoot [T]rump in the face.”

Ferrier then addressed one of the letters to Trump which instructed him to “[g]ive up and remove [his] application for this election.” She mailed all the letters from Canada to the United States.

Officials said Ferrier then drove a car from Canada to the Peace Bridge Border Crossing in Buffalo, New York, on Sept. 20, where border officials arrested her after finding a loaded firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and other weapons. Ferrier has since remained in custody.

Ferrier was also sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release. She will also be issued what is called an order of judicial removal requiring that she be removed from the US after completing her sentence.