Blake Hall
This is hair-raising.
According to federal prosecutors Monday, a man from Harford County, Maryland was arrested Friday on charges that he attempted to provide material to a foreign terrorist organization, as well as other offenses.
Mohammed Elshinawy, 30, “pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh) and received thousands of dollars from overseas to carry out an attack”, authorities said.
The suspected terrorist is a native of Edgewood, Maryland.
This from the Baltimore Sun:
The criminal complaint filed against Elshinawy lays out extensive communications the FBI says he had with contacts overseas and alleges he received at least $8,700 he believed was from the Islamic State terror group …
“When confronted by the FBI, he lied in order to conceal his support for ISIL and the steps he took to provide material support to the deadly foreign terrorist organization,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General John P. Carlin said in a statement.
“He will now be held accountable for these crimes.”
It is not clear in court papers if prosecutors believe the money wired to him was from the terrorist group or from a sympathizer.
This is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for the feds. They track terrorists sympathizers and cells within the borders of the U.S. with hawk eyes (extensive surveillance doesn’t hurt the cause either) and have periodically hauled in these potentially dangerous, radicalized moles from time to time. What’s groundbreaking in this case, however, is that the Baltimore-area man was receiving funds from the terrorists directly.
That’s sometime they haven’t seen before.
One expert, Michael Greenberger — director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security likened ISIS’s tactic currently in America to fishing … and bait. In other words, entice unaffiliated U.S. citizens who might have an affinity for the group plan an attack of their own.
“It appears they have enough money to be able to set out a lot of lures, hoping that one lure will catch somebody who’s willing to engage in dangerous activity,” he said.
Case in point: the deadly San Bernardino shootings.
According to court documents, federal agents first interviewed Elshinawy back in July, after he received a wire transfer of $1,000 from Egypt. When they asked him about the money, he said it was from his mother, then he went back on it and said he received it after a friend of his — accused of being a terrorist in both Africa and Syria — made a connection with an ISIS operative, who then sent him the dough.
He said the operative hinted that he should carry out an attack, citing the shooting in Garland, Texas earlier in the year at the site of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest.
In attempt to wriggle out of the arrest, he tried to flip the story around in talks with agents, saying that he was merely conning ISIS out of easy money.
“He claimed he saw an opportunity to make money and take it from ‘thieves’, and felt that the FBI should reward him for what he had done,” said one agent.
This, of course, turned out to be baloney, especially when feds discovered his social media trail and that — not only had he pledged allegiance to the group — but he talked about making bombs and even eventually relocating to Iraq or Syria.