FBI says Bolingbrook teen hoped to join ISIS
A Bolingbrook teenager who expressed disgust with Western society was arrested Saturday at O'Hare International Airport, from where he intended to travel to Turkey so that he could sneak into Syria to join the Islamic State group, according to criminal complaint released Monday.
Members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, and charged him with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
Khan appeared in a federal court Monday in orange jail clothes, calmly telling a federal magistrate he understood the allegations. As marshals led him away in handcuffs, the slight, bearded young man turned to smile at his parents — his father putting his arm around Khan's weeping mother.
The judge ordered him held until a detention hearing Thursday. Prosecutors indicated they would ask he stay behind bars pending trial. Bolingbrook police officials say they've never had contact with Khan in the past.
Even so, according to prosecutors, Khan was trying to fly to Istanbul by way of Vienna when customs officers stopped him while he was going through security at O'Hare's international terminal. While FBI agents interviewed him there, others executed a search warrant at Khan's home and found documents he wrote expressing support for the Islamic State group.
One page in a notebook had a drawing of what appeared to be an armed fighter with an Islamic State group flag and the words “Come to Jihad” written in Arabic, according to the criminal complaint.
Agents also found a handwritten three-page letter from Khan to his parents in which he informs them he was on his way to Syria and the Islamic State, saying he was upset his U.S. taxes were going to kill his “Muslim brothers and sisters,” the complaint says.
“We are all witness that the western societies are getting more immoral day by day,” he wrote, then signed letter, “Your loving son,” according to court documents.
Khan purchased the Austrian Airlines ticket to Turkey in late September. Among the notes found at his home were drawings with arrows indicating where he might make border crossings into Syria, the complaint states. It says in the note to his parents, Khan warned them in capital letters, “FIRST and FOREMOST, PLEASE MAKE SURE NOT TO TELL THE AUTHORITIES.”
During the FBI interview at the airport, Khan said he was supposed to reach a contact in Istanbul who would then put him in touch with members of the Islamic State group, authorities allege. Asked by agents what he would do there, Khan allegedly said he would, in the words of the complaint, “be involved in some type of public service, a police force, humanitarian work or a combat role.”
It wasn't clear why authorities chose to stop Khan, whether they had been tipped off that day or had been watching him for days in advance. Neither prosecutors nor Khan's attorney spoke after Monday's hearing.
At a two-story house believed to be his family's home, no one would address reporters outside. But neighbor Steve Moore, 31, described Khan as a soft-spoken and polite, saying the young man his family were always friendly and quick to say hello.
Another young man from the suburbs also is accused of trying to join militants in Syria. Abdella Tounisi, of Aurora, was arrested last year at O'Hare when he was 18. He has pleaded not guilty to seeking to provide material support to al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.