New Yorker admits he flew to Saudi Arabia in a failed bid to join the ISIS terrorist group
A New Yorker has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS.
Parveg Ahmed, a US citizen, entered the plea in federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
The 22-year-old Queens resident faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to a criminal complaint, Ahmed sent messages on social media about his support of the Islamist terror group.
He told the court, according to the New York Post: ‘I tried to travel to a land controlled by an organization which the US government has deemed a Foreign Terrorist Organization
‘I knew it was deemed a Foreign Terrorist Organization. That’s my crime, traveling there.’
His plea says he traveled to Saudi Arabia with others in a failed attempt to join ISIS.
US officials say he was detained in an unnamed country bordering Syria and sent back to New York City last August.
Ahmed’s attorney declined to comment.
‘As alleged, Ahmed sought to take up arms with violent terrorists who have killed numerous innocent victims, including Americans,’ Acting US Attorney Bridget Rohde said in a statement last year.
According to the complaint, Ahmed first began posting pro-Islamic State messages on social media in 2014 and 2015.
One read, ‘The side of Good is Islam & the Caliphate. If you’re not with the Muslims, you’re ignorantly, irrelevantly, & arrogantly on the side of Evil,’ the complaint said.
In June, Ahmed and a person referred to only as a confidential co-conspirator traveled to Saudi Arabia before they were captured, court papers filed last year said.
A cellphone carried by Ahmed contained an unsent message saying, ‘God willing, we will join the Jijad very soon’ and a farewell to his family reading, ‘Please remember all that I tried to teach you.’
Agents searching a laptop used by Ahmed also discovered ISIS propaganda and sermons by American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaida in Yemen who was killed in 2011, the papers said.
The online videos of Al-Awlaki have been cited in several US cases as being a dangerous influence on self-radicalized terrorists.
The computer contained other lectures by Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, a radical cleric arrested last week in Jamaica on a US warrant accusing him of trying to recruit radicalized Americans for ISIS.
El-Faisal had been the target of a sting carried out by an undercover New York Police Department officer who communicated with him by email, text and video chat.
Source: Daily Mail
