A 27-year old Virginia man, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, was convicted by a federal jury on Wednesday of providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to court evidence, Khweis quit his job, sold his car, closed all online accounts, left the United States and traveled to Syria without telling his family in December 2015. From there, he crossed the international border into Syria.
During his trip, he used numerous encrypted devices to conceal his activities, going so far as to download secure messaging applications to ensure his web activity remained anonymous. Prosecutors alleged that Khweis used those encrypted devices to talk to various ISIS facilitators as he secured passage to train with the extremist group.
As he met with his facilitators in Syria, he stayed as an ISIS safe house with other recruits and filled out physical forms which included his name, skills, age, and status as a possible suicide bomber. U.S. military forces subsequently found his intake forms, along with the information of 19 other ISIS recruits, in February 2017.
Khweis was captured by Kurdish Peshmerga forces after ISIS was forced out of a small Iraqi neighborhood in March 2016.
During his trial, Khweis admitted to spending approximately 2.5 months with the extremist group, where he participated in religious training.
“Khweis knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly who ISIS was, and was well aware of their thirst for extreme violence,” Dana Boente, acting assistant attorney general for National Security for the Eastern District of Virginia, said. “Nonetheless, this did not deter him. Instead, Khweis voluntarily chose to join the ranks of a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that is a federal crime, even if you get scared and decide to leave.”
Khweis now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years to life in prison, which will be determined on October 13.