Minnesota Teen Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy With ISIS

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Minneapolis courthouse
Minneapolis courthouse

Teenager Abdullahi Mohamud Yusuf, from Minnesota was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
The 18 year old admitted to the U.S District court that he planned to join ISIS and was to fly to Syria. He was apprehended at the airport attempting to board a flight to Syria in May.
The Minneapolis Court deferred sentencing to a later date. The maximum is 15 years.

The StarTribune report: Authorities say a handful of Minnesota residents have traveled to Syria to fight with militants in the last year. At least one Minnesotan has died there. In addition, at least 22 young Somali men have traveled from Minnesota to Somalia since 2007 to join the terrorist group al-Shabab.

Yusuf admitted in court that he learned about people who had traveled or wanted to travel to Syria to fight against the regime of President Bashar Assad. Yusuf said he attended meetings in Minnesota last March and April in which participants discussed fighting.

Court documents show Yusuf, who was in high school at the time, applied for an expedited passport shortly after he turned 18 in April and lied about the nature of his travel, telling a passport agent he was going to Istanbul, Turkey, for vacation.

FBI agents stopped Yusuf at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on May 28, and he was arrested six months later.

Yusuf said Thursday that he actually had planned to meet another man, Abdi Nur, in Istanbul, and that the two of them planned to travel to Syria together. Nur, who is also charged in the case, is believed to be fighting with militants in Syria.

 

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