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3 Brooklyn men plotted to help ISIS, officials say

 
A drawing shows, Akhror Saidakhmetov, left, attorney Adam Perlmutter and Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev in federal court.
A drawing shows, Akhror Saidakhmetov, left, attorney Adam Perlmutter and Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev in federal court.
Published Feb. 26, 2015

NEW YORK — Three Brooklyn men were charged Wednesday with aiding the Islamic State, the terrorist organization that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has been actively recruiting young people from around the world to its fight.

Akhror Saidakhmetov, 19, was arrested at Kennedy Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul, authorities said. Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 24, had a ticket to travel to Istanbul next month and was arrested in Brooklyn, federal prosecutors said. The two were held without bail after a brief court appearance.

A third defendant, Abror Habibov, 30, is accused of helping fund Saidakhmetov's efforts and was ordered held without bail in Jacksonville; he operated kiosks that repair phones and sell kitchenware in malls in Jacksonville; Savannah, Ga.; and Philadelphia. Habibov has no further criminal record in Florida.

The three are charged with attempt and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. If convicted, each faces a maximum of 15 years in prison.

At least two of the men had threatened to carry out attacks on targets in the United States if they failed in their attempt to travel overseas, according to the government.

"This is real," William J. Bratton, the New York City police commissioner, said at a news conference. "This is the concern about the lone wolf."

The arrests came one week after authorities in London said they were looking for three teenage girls who left their homes and were suspected of traveling to Syria — part of a growing pattern of people leaving their friends and families in the West and seeking to join the ranks of the jihadis.

Although it is believed that thousands of people from Europe have traveled to Syria in recent months, Bratton said the arrests of the three Brooklyn men represented the first time the authorities had made public a case linking New Yorkers to the effort by the Islamic State to draw people under its banner.

In a speech earlier Wednesday, FBI director James Comey said the threat posed by ISIS sympathizers was escalating.

"I have homegrown violent extremist investigations in every single state," he said in the speech at a meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Comey said ISIS "is putting out a siren song through their slick propaganda through social media that goes like this: 'Troubled soul, come to the caliphate, you will live a life of glory, these are the apocalyptic end times, you will find a life of meaning here fighting for our so-called caliphate, and if you can't come, kill somebody where you are.' "

"That is a message that goes out to troubled souls everywhere, resonates with troubled souls — people seeking meaning in some horribly misguided way," he added.

The men charged on Wednesday appeared to fit that mold, according to court documents. They were influenced by videos posted online by ISIS, inspired by messages on social media and were compelled to act.

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The court documents show young men driven to travel thousands of miles to the killing fields in the desert even as they clashed at home with family members they considered infidels. One of the young men had his passport taken away by his mother, who had grown concerned about his behavior.

At times, they come across as naive. One of the men said he would need only $400 in Syria because ISIS would take care of their needs, according to the complaint. But they were committed, vowing to shoot police officers if their plans fell through.

The documents also provide one of the most detailed accounts of the logistics involved in recruitment into the group, showing the young men wrestling with how to evade law enforcement, sneak across borders and communicate with members of ISIS from afar.

The federal agents' investigation appears to have started with Juraboev and his online activities, detailed in the court documents.

On Aug. 8, 2014, a person whose Internet protocol address and alias matched those of Juraboev posted to Hilofatnews, an Uzbek-language website supportive of ISIS: "I am in USA now but we don't have any arms. But is it possible to commit ourselves as dedicated martyrs anyway while here? What I'm saying is, to shoot Obama and then get shot ourselves, will it do?"

On Aug. 15, federal agents went to Juraboev's Brooklyn home.

He said he believed in ISIS's agenda, would like to travel to Syria to fight on its behalf and would harm President Barack Obama if he could, according to court papers.

In an interview with agents at his residence three days later, Juraboev said that Saidakhmetov was a co-worker with similar views on the jihadis. Investigators found that in early August, Saidakhmetov had also posted a message on Hilofatnews celebrating a massacre of Iraqi soldiers by ISIS fighters.

On Aug. 26, Juraboev emailed with an administrator of a website affiliated with ISIS, asking about how to travel overseas now that he was being monitored.

"If right now I decide to go to the airport and go anywhere, except for Uzbekistan, they may arrest me. It's because of what I told them about Obama," he wrote. "What should I do? I need to sneak out of here with extreme caution without being noticed by them."