A former member of the Army National Guard was arrested and is sentenced with imprisonment after trying to help ISIS. (Courtesy: Getty Images)
(Jonah Bennett, The Daily Caller News Foundation) – A former member of the Army National Guard, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for trying to aid the Islamic State.
U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady handed down the sentence Friday, also adding that Jalloh would be on five years supervised released after he serves his term, according to the Department of Justice.
The case dates back to March 2016, when Jalloh was introduced by an overseas member of ISIS, Abu Sa’ad Sudani, to another supposed local member of ISIS. But the problem is that local ISIS member was actually an FBI source. Sudani is now dead.
This overseas ISIS member was trying to plot an attack inside the U.S. and figured that both Jalloh and the FBI source would be the ones to carry it out.
Jalloh, who was born in Sierra Leone, met with the FBI source twice and said after listening to lectures by deceased al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki, he decided not to continue his service in the Virginia Army National Guard. He also told the source he found himself thinking about conducting an attack constantly, one that looked like the terrorist attack at Fort Hood in 2009, when U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others. Jalloh also said he admired the attacker who killed five service members in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 2015.
Slightly before this event, he had decided to take a long trip to Nigeria. There, he met several ISIS members in Nigeria and established contact with the ISIS member who would later introduce him to the FBI source. He was initially going to travel to Libya to join the terrorist group, but backed out.
His downfall came when he met with the FBI source in May 2016 and began plotting for an attack during the month of Ramadan. But still, he was unsure if his “heart would be strong and not fail him” during a terror attack, and so he figured that at the very least he could give a donation.
Jalloh then gave a $500 prepaid cash transfer to an FBI agent, who the FBI source said was an ISIS member. But the FBI didn’t immediately arrest him, instead waiting until July when Jalloh tried to obtain an assault rifle from a gun dealership. He bought the weapon and walked out, but the weapon had actually been disabled without his knowledge.
The next day, the FBI finally arrested him.
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