2 TUCSON RESIDENTS CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTING TO JOIN ISIS
Two men were arrested
Friday at the Tucson airport by the FBI, allegedly for planning to fly overseas
to join a terrorist organization, officials said.
Ahmed Mahad Mohamed,
21, and Abdi Yemani Hussein, 20, were arrested after a nearly year-long
undercover investigation by the FBI, according to court documents filed under
seal on Friday and made public Monday.
They are being charged
in federal court with conspiring to provide material support and resources to a
foreign terrorist organization.
Mohamed is a lawful
permanent resident and a refugee from Somalia, and Hussein is also a Somali
refugee, the FBI said in a charging affidavit. A hearing has not yet
been set in the case.
The case began in
mid-August 2018, when Mohamed "initiated contact" with an FBI
"online covert employee" on a social media service, authorities said.
Mohamed thought the FBI employee was an ISIS supporter, and the 21-year-old
repeatedly expressed his admiration for the terrorist group.
He told the FBI
employee that he wanted to be the "beheading guy" if he joined ISIS
in Syria, and wrote that "I only think about jihad everywhere I go but my
father and mom, they don't like jihad if they knew me I want to make hijrah
they would spy on me," court documents allege.
Mohamed also wrote
that "I want to kill them so many I am thirsty for their blood," the
documents said.
n December 2018,
Mohamed was introduced to an undercover FBI agent in Tucson, and eventually met
in person after what the court documents said were repeated discussions about
traveling to the Middle East to fight with ISIS.
In March, Mohamed
brought Hussein to one of those meetings, and told the FBI agent he wanted to
join Al-Shabab, another terrorist organization.
Mohamed indicated that
he would carry out an attack in the United States if he were unable to join
ISIS overseas, the FBI said.
The two men made
travel arrangements, including purchasing airplane tickets to travel to Cairo,
according to the FBI filing.
The FBI monitored the
paperwork submitted by the two men as they planned their travel, the filing
said.
After Mohamed told the
undercover agent last Thursday that the two had bought the tickets, they were
arrested at Tucson International Airport the next day after they checked in for
a flight and had passed through security, en route "join ISIS," the
FBI said.
The Justice Department
requested that the charges be sealed on Friday, citing a "sensitive matter
of national security" and telling the judge that witnesses were still
being interviewed. The prosecutors told the judge that they would ask for the
documents to be unsealed on Monday.
Magistrate Judge Maria
S. Davila granted that motion to seal, and approved Monday's motion to make the
case available.
Source: TucsonSentinel.com
– 29 July 2019
By: Dylan Smith
By: Dylan Smith
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