[Gainesville] A former Gainesville resident and University of Florida student was charged with attempting to join and give money 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....
of Iraq and Syria, commonly known as the foreign terrorist organization ISIS, in a criminal complaint released Monday by the U.S. Attorney's office.
Mohammed Fathy Suliman, a 33-year-old U.S. citizen, attended UF for the fall 2005 semester and spring 2006 semester as a food science and human nutrition major, according to university spokeswoman Cynthia Roldan.
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Roldan said UF officials would not comment but did cooperate with the investigation.
After leaving UF, Suliman racked up three traffic violations in Alachua County per the clerk of courts: cutting across traffic to avoid a control device in 2006, failure to obey a traffic control device in 2008 and a speeding ticket in 2009.
From there, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent R. David Collins picked up the narrative in his criminal complaint. A Gmail account belonging to Suliman held 36 email attachments calling for, justifying and offering rewards for jihad, as well as encouraging fighting against non-Moslems and people who insulted the Moslem prophet Muhammad, in messages from May 2009 to October 2012.
Collins' investigation also found that Suliman's UF email account, not his personal Gmail, was used to create a Facebook profile. The profile picture was a photo of the black ISIS flag.
On June 12, 2014, eight years after he attended UF, Suliman left Gainesville with $1,000 cash on a flight from Orlando to Istanbul, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
, the FBI complaint said. Instead of continuing on his next booked flight to Egypt, he paid cash for a one-way ticket to Gaziantep, Turkey, a shared border town with Syria.
Paying cash eliminated a credit card trail tracing his movements, the FBI complaint said.
In Turkey, Suliman was directed by locals to pay $50 cash to a bus driver who would then drive him illegally across the border into Syria, where he could join ISIS. While attempting to cross the border, Suliman was captured and questioned by the Ottoman Turkish government. He claimed the purpose of his trip was to travel and see what life and war was like in Syria.
Suliman was fined $2,000 Ottoman Turkish Liras and deported to Sudan.
Why Sudan? He had not returned to the U.S. until now for prosecution.
On Oct. 23, 2018, while picking up his renewed U.S. passport, Suliman agreed to a non-custodial interview at the U.S. Embassy in Sudan.
During the interview, which was covertly recorded, Suliman said he researched online how to travel to Syria and join ISIS and booked the flight from Orlando to do so. Once in Syria, he said, he would meet with members of the ISIS, al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
h Front, Jaish al-Islam
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
and "Jabhah Shamiya" to determine which group he wanted to support.
Suliman signed a written statement during the interview documenting his travel intentions, Collins' complaint stated. Suliman also said that he did not support ISIS' beheadings and torture but was willing to provide money and offer his English speaking and writing capabilities for its media branch.
Suliman said he has had bipolar disorder since mid-2006, and when he does not take his medicine, his beliefs change from being a moderate Moslem to a Salafist Moslem.
ISIS members are Islamic Death Eaters, and they are different from the overall Salafi branch of Islam. Salafism is a subsect of Sunni Islam, which is one of two main branches of the religion. Only one of three types of Salafi Moslems are jihadists, who attach a military context to the idea of jihad, which means to strive to conform with God's guidance in the Islamic holy book, the Koran. And within the jihadist group, a smaller number still become gunnies and Islamic Death Eaters, adding a political agenda on top.
Suliman's initial court appearance was 2 p.m. Monday at the Gainesville federal courthouse for the Northern District of Florida, 401 SE First Ave. He is being held in the Alachua County Jail and was booked at 1:30 Sunday morning under the name Mohammad Fathy Sulayman.
Federal law prohibits knowingly considering, attempting or providing material support to a foreign terrorist rganization, like ISIS. If convicted, Suliman could face 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Suliman's preliminary and detention hearings are scheduled for 2 p.m. Feb. 8 in federal court in Gainesville, according to Andrea Clark, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tallahassee.
The FBI had previously questioned Suliman in 2011 at the U.S. Consulate Office in Istanbul after he attempted to fly from Turkey to New York, but the investigation did not reveal any apparent ties at the time.
An arrest warrant was issued in September, but Suliman never returned to the U.S. after 2014. Investigators found he was living in India. Suliman was recently expelled from India and returned to the U.S. by the FBI for prosecution.
Why India?
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