Connecticut man sentenced in attempt to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS

A Connecticut man was convicted Thursday for attempting to travel to Syria to support ISIS.

Kevin Iman McCormick, 30, of Hamden, Conn., was sentenced to 144 months in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised releases, for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, according to a court release.

According to court documents, McCormick made several statements in 2019 to others expressing his desire to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

In August 2019, McCormick told members of a Muslim community center “we should support ISIS” and “jihad is the way to go.”

Court documents also stated McCormick told someone “I gotta fight, bro, because those people … and [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], they fought for me, bro. I know it, I can feel it in my heart. So it’s my time to fight … It just is what it is, bro, it’s just my — it’s just my time to go, bro.”

He also reportedly told the person that “it’s gonna be very hard to kill me.”

McCormick was arrested on Oct. 21, 2019, when he attempted to board a plane from Connecticut to Canada. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 12 to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

It was not the first time McCormick attempted to leave the country to fight for ISIS.

In the weeks prior to his arrest, he attempted to board a flight from Connecticut to Jamaica but was prevented from doing so by the Department of Homeland Security. He then reportedly told a person he wanted to travel to Jamaica and from there to Syria to join ISIS. Days later, he made a video in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its then-leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, according to court documents.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force investigated the case with assistance from the Transportation Security Administration.

Source » msn