Ohio Man Indicted on Terror Charges

Federal officials accused a Columbus, Ohio, man of travelling to Syria to support an al Qaeda affiliate and returning to the U.S. with plans to launch a terrorist attack, the first such known case against an American citizen.
Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 23 years old, allegedly trained with extremists in Syria last year as part of that country’s civil war before receiving instructions to attack police officers or military targets in the U.S., according to an indictment released Thursday. No such attack appears to have taken place.
The case stands out among recent charges against Americans accused of trying to join Islamic State or other extremist groups because the Justice Department says Mr. Mohamud actually got to Syria and received training in explosives, weapons and hand-to-hand combat.
Defendants in nearly all the other cases were arrested at U.S. airports as they attempted to leave the country. In many of them, the terrorist recruiter they thought they were working with was an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
In February of last year, Mr. Mohamud, who is a native of Somalia, obtained his U.S. citizenship, the indictment says. A week later, he sent in an application for a passport. Then, in April of 2014, Mr. Mohamud bought a one-way plane ticket to Athens, with a layover in Istanbul. But, according to the indictment, he never got on the flight to Greece. Instead, he allegedly met up with men who took him to Syria.
Mr. Mohamud was arrested in February of this year on state terrorism charges and held by Ohio authorities. Before he was indicted on federal charges, he tried to negotiate a plea deal with prosecutors, but those talks fell apart, said people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Mohamud was being transferred to federal custody Thursday. He faces one charge of providing material support to terrorists, another of providing material support to the al Qaeda affiliate known as Nusra Front, and a third of lying to federal agents. Each charge carries up to 15 years in prison.
Mr. Mohamud’s lawyer, Sam Shamansky, said the accusations “certainly sound sinister and to the extent they appear to punish talk and thought, I would say it’s a whole bunch of nothing.”
Mr. Shamansky said the government’s account of plans to commit violence in the U.S. “is all about talk and very little about action.” His client, he said, “comes from a loving, well-adjusted family that’s trying to make the best of it in a new country.’’
Counterterrorism officials have grown increasingly worried about Americans and other Westerners obtaining combat training in the Syrian civil war and then coming home to carry out attacks.
The man who helped Mr. Mohamud get to Syria was allegedly an actual fighter—his brother, Abdifatah Aden Mohamud, according to the indictment. In late 2013 and early 2014, Abdirahman allegedly exchanged messages with his brother in which he said he was proud of him and they plotted about how Abdirahman could join him in Syria. In one message, Abdirahman told his brother that firing a rifle brought one closer to heaven.
Mr. Mohamud also posted messages on Facebook before he allegedly left the U.S. In one, according to the indictment, he said, “We will never lose to these pagen [sic] alawyits,” an apparent reference to the Alawite sect of Islam to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs. In another, he posted an image of a soldier with the Islamic State logo and the words, “Among the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with Allah.”
The indictment quotes from online conversations between the two men who transported Mr. Mohamud to Syria from Turkey. One said that Mr. Mohamud had gone to the al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, but had wanted to join Islamic State.
Once in Syria, Mr. Mohamud appears to have sent videos to a contact in the U.S., the indictment says. One showed him carrying a gun on his hip and saying he was in Syria. In a video allegedly sent to another contact, Mr. Mohamud held an AK-47 rifle.
That June, according to the indictment, his brother appears to have been killed in battle in Syria. Just before he was to begin fighting in Syria, a cleric allegedly told Mr. Mohamud he should instead go home and launch an attack. Mr. Mohamud returned to the U.S. He allegedly told someone—identified in the indictment only as Unnamed Person #1—that he had gone to Syria and received combat training.
Mr. Mohamud allegedly said he wanted to attack military or police targets. He told a second person he wanted to do “something big” in the U.S., like going to a military base in Texas and executing a few American soldiers, the indictment said.
This February an FBI agent interviewed Mr. Mohamud. He denied having left Istanbul during the period in which the government says he went to Syria.
Hassan Omar, president of Somali Association of Ohio, knows the arrested man’s mother. “She is not a fanatic and appreciates the new life in the United States,” he said. They met at a community center, and he last saw her at her son’s arraignment, he said.
“This is very unfortunate news. It is not something we had been expecting from this community,” said Mr. Omar, who arrived in Columbus in 1998. “There is not a single Somali youth who left here to join Al Shabab or any terrorist groups. We are law-abiding and not violent.”
“Nobody expected a young man educated in the U.S. to do this,” he said.
Mr. Mohamud lived in a semidetached white clapboard house at the end of a cul-de-sac on Columbus’s west side. A next-door neighbor who declined to be identified said he knew Mr. Mohamud and described the family as somewhat friendly. He said the neighborhood was racially and ethically diverse and the Mohamud family didn’t stand out for any particular reason after moving in about a year ago.
Mr. Mohamud attended high school in Columbus, after which he worked at warehouse jobs in the area and had “virtually no contact with the criminal justice system,’’ his lawyer said.
But last December, after Mr. Mohamud returned from his trip overseas, he was arrested after walking out on a restaurant check without paying and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, according to a lawyer who represented him in that case. He was scheduled to be sentenced in February, but didn’t show up in court. A few days later he was arrested on state terrorism charges.
The indictment Thursday “highlights the grave threat we face from returning American jihadists,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas). “Terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda are luring Americans to the combat zone in Syria and Iraq, and radicalized individuals are now clearly returning with the training and motivation to bring terror to our shores.”
The case puts a spotlight on the Somali community in Columbus, the second-largest in the country after Minneapolis.
Somalis began flocking to the Midwestern city in the 1990s, often directly from Kenyan refugee camps. Relatively cheap housing, blue-collar jobs and family ties attracted a secondary migration from California, Virginia and other states through the 2000s.
One Somali community leader in Columbus said that American law enforcement had been interviewing youngsters who had come into contact with Mr. Mohamud. He expressed concern that the community was “under pressure” and feeling “targeted.”
The office of Mayor Michael B. Coleman estimates the size of the Somali population, including foreign and U.S.-born residents, at about 40,000. The refugees run small business, work in warehouses, drive cabs and are employed in health care. The census estimates the population of Somali origin in Columbus at about 13,000, which community leaders say underestimates its size.

Source:wsj.com