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Home Front: WoT

Minnesota man charged with providing material support to Islamic State

2020-09-17

[ALMASDARNEWS] A resident of the US state of Minnesota has been charged with providing support to the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
terrorist group (outlawed in Russia),

...outlawed in America, too, O idiotic Al Masdar reporter...

the Department of Justice announced in a blurb.

"Abdelhamid al-Madioum, 23, of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, has been charged by indictment with providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (IS), a designated foreign terrorist organization," the release said on Wednesday.

Al-Madioum was detained overseas by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and recently transferred into FBI custody and then returned to Minnesota, the Justice Department noted.

"On June 23, 2015, al-Madioum, a native of Morocco and naturalized US citizen, and his family traveled from St. Louis Park, Minnesota, to Casablanca, Morocco, to visit their extended family. On July 8, 2015, al-Madioum left Morocco and traveled to Istanbul, ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor...
, and then on to Iraq and Syria, where he joined [IS]," the release said.

In March 2019, al-Madioum was captured and detained by the SDF, the Justice Department noted.

Update from the Star Tribune at 4:00 p.m. EDT:

Al-Madioum, who lost much of one arm from an apparent air assault in Iraq...

Al-Madioum studied engineering at Normandale Community College in Bloomington from June 2014 to May 2015. According to a federal search warrant, he also worked for the college’s IT department.

Interviews with former classmates of al-Madioum following a 2017 Star Tribune report on his disappearance painted a picture of an easygoing man who liked cracking jokes and had an affinity for marijuana.

Former friends say he grew more devout in his Moslem faith and withdrew from his former friend group not long after his family caught him with marijuana.

According to the complaint:

Family members said that while in Casablanca on July 7, 2015, al-Madioum claimed to not feel well and skipped dinner. He later prayed and socialized with family until 3 a.m., then went to bed.

When family awoke the next day, al-Madioum was gone. So was his passport and cellphone. Law enforcement in Morocco told the family al-Madioum boarded a commercial flight that morning to Istanbul, a common pathway to Syria for ISIS recruits.

FBI agents searched the family’s home in St. Louis Park about a month later and found notes he wrote expressing his intent to join ISIS.

They included a sketch of a symbol on the ISIS flag. Next to it al-Madioum wrote the Arabic word for "allegiance."

In late August of that year, al-Madioum called his family and said he was working in a hospital in ISIS-controlled djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, Iraq, treating the injured.

In March 2017, al-Madioum informed his family he moved to Raqqa, Syria, and had a child with a woman he married after her husband died fighting for ISIS. It is "common for ISIS members to marry women whose husbands have died while fighting for ISIS," the indictment read.

U.S. military in Mosul located payroll and biographical documents indicating that al-Madioum was in ISIS.

In fall 2016, al-Madioum was assigned as a soldier in a battalion whose duties included "preparing imported muscle to conduct suicide kabooms in European countries," the criminal complaint read. The unit’s founder was the criminal mastermind behind terror attacks in Gay Paree in 2015 and in Belgium in 2016.

But in an interview with CBS News last year in Syria after his arrest, al-Madioum said he never fought for ISIS.

By March 2019, ISIS territory had withered under SDF assaults to a small village on the Syria-Iraq border. al-Madioum and others surrendered to the SDF and was moved to a Syrian prison.

He said two children with him were his, and that his wife had been killed in Syria.

FBI agents met with al-Madioum four months later. He told them he lost his right arm above the elbow during an ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
<del>Arclight</del> airstrike

...KABOOM!...
in Mosul and suffered leg injuries as well.

He later admitted to the FBI that he first contacted ISIS on Twitter saying "he wanted to fight Moslem oppression by the Syrian regime and to attend medical school."

A Twitter account promoting ISIS called "Birds of Paradise" provided al-Madioum on how to travel to Syria and join the terror group.

Once in Istanbul, al-Madioum told the FBI, he was among about 30 people who were trucked to the ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
-Syria border, then escorted into Syria on foot.

Not long after, he was taken to Mosul, where he was trained in first aid and assigned to a hospital.

After the injury to his arm and legs from the airstrike, he was unable to work. He stayed in Mosul until surrendering to the SDF 18 months later.

In his interview with CBS, al-Madioum claimed that FBI interrogators warned that he could face 15 years in prison if brought back to the country he once called home.

"Fifteen years is a very long time for mistakes you made coming to Syria," al-Madioum told the network, adding he believed he should be forgiven.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. said he would be surprised if there was not an element of "peer-to-peer" recruitment, as with the young Somali-Minnesotans who plotted to go to Syria in 2014 and 2015. "If not, this is truly an outlier," he said.

Al-Madioum is now the eighth Minnesotan identified as being under suspicion of leaving his family behind to join ISIS.

The FBI has said that it has 1,000 counterterrorism investigations open, spanning all 50 states, and Minnesota has seen more than most. Three of the suspected Minnesota travelers have been charged and nine others convicted of trying to follow them.

Since 2015, the flow of Americans trying to join the terror group overseas has slowed to a trickle of just one or two per month. That may reflect a shift in recruitment messaging: As it has lost territory in Syria and Iraq, ISIS has been encouraging its followers to commit attacks in their home countries.

Posted by:Fred

#3 which Muslamic terrorist organization?

Barack Obama and (most likely) Lutheran Charities.

Posted by: Thong Bumble1096 2020-09-17 13:39

#2 Abdelhamid al-Madioum, 23, of St. Louis Park, Minnesota

Of St. Louis Park Minnesota via which Muslamic terrorist organization?

Posted by: jpal 2020-09-17 11:15

#1 De-Naturalize him and his clan

Posted by: Frank G 2020-09-17 09:55

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