The strange story of a beloved couple who spent four years in a remote Alaskan community before their interception as domestic terrorists has not become any more comprehendible upon the couple's sentencing Monday.

They are linked to an American-born Muslim cleric who has become so radical that, in April, President Barack Obama ordered that cleric's assassination. American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki has ties to Al Qaeda and the 9-11 bombers, in addition to the more recent massacre at Fort Hood and the failed attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner last Christmas.

The New York Times describes al-Awlaki as "an eloquent Muslim cleric who has turned the Web into a tool for extremist indoctrination." Somehow King Salmon, Alaska, resident Paul Rockwood, who converted to Islam in Virginia in 2001 or 2002 and who is known to spend a lot of time on the internet, found the cleric's teachings and became a loyal follower. The defense characterized Rockwood's violent interest as largely fantasy until an undercover agent became involved and helped give the ideations coherency and concrete plans. Prosecutors, however, are resolute that Rockwood isn't a naïve and lonely introvert unfairly led into a criminal plot, but rather, a man who has been considering the assassination of Americans for years.

Monday afternoon, in Alaska's first-ever case of domestic terrorism prosecuted under the Patriot Act, Rockwood, 35, was sentenced to eight years in prison. His wife Nadia, 36, a naturalized U.S. citizen, received probation and must return to her home country of England for five years, where she'll be able to raise the couple's four-year-old son and give birth to their second child, due in November. The couple had developed a wide social group while living in King Salmon, and Mrs. Rockwood was an active community volunteer. (The LA Times has a good profile here.) But by this spring, a hit list compiled by Rockwood of people he'd like to hurt and possibly kill, including military members and the media, coupled with research into shooting people and into mailing and activating bombs, had made investigators nervous. Ultimately, it was the Rockwood's decision to leave Alaska that forced the couple's arrest.

"The further Mr. Rockwood would have gotten from Alaska the closer he would have come to his victims," argued prosecutor Stephen Skrocki in seeking the maximum penalty. "Any further development in this investigation may have put lives at risk."

The list is said to have contained the names of people and organizations that Rockwood believed had committed crimes against Muslims and who deserved to be punished. When the FBI obtained the list, it warned the people on it that they were the intended victims of a potential assassination plot, but didn't tell them who was behind it.

One of the men on the so-called "hit list" is Tom Bolinder, a vice president of the Military Combat Defense Fund, a Massachusetts-based non-profit group that funds the defense of American military members charged with violent crimes that occurred during combat while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Bolinder was the only victim who chose to identify himself and speak in person at Monday's sentencing.

"I waited many nights in the darkness for you, Mr. Rockwood, as did many of my friends," Bolinder said, standing before a microphone, looking toward Rockwood, the judge and the attorneys.

Bolinder, a former marine and career police officer, was unable to hold back tears when describing how the death threat had forced him to break a pledge he made to himself after the Vietnam War - to never take another human life. Had Rockwood come, Bolinder was prepared to be the one to leave the confrontation alive.

Through letters read by Skrocki, other victims described having to install security systems and carry concealed weapons.