MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis man who allegedly expressed admiration for the truck assault in New Orleans that killed 14 folks has been accused of making an attempt to hitch the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors introduced Friday.
Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 22, made his first court docket look on a cost of trying to supply materials help to a overseas terrorist group. He was ordered held with out bail till a detention listening to March 5.
The chief federal defender for Minnesota, Katherian Roe, mentioned her workplace will characterize him however declined to touch upon the case.
The legal criticism towards Hassan, a naturalized U.S. citizen, alleges that he tried twice in December to journey from Minnesota to Somalia to hitch the group however didn’t succeed. It says he claimed he was going to go to household however had none there.
Prosecutors mentioned the FBI’s investigation established that Hassan expressed public help for the group in a number of posts on social media and likewise praised Shamsud-Din Jabbar on TikTok over the New Orleans assault.
Investigators say Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and U.S. Military veteran, posted movies professing allegiance to the Islamic State group and an intent to hurt others earlier than he plowed a pickup by a crowd of New Yr’s revelers on Bourbon Avenue on Jan. 1. Police fatally shot him throughout an change of gunfire on the scene.
Hassan additionally allegedly posted a video final week, of himself driving whereas holding an Islamic State group flag inside his automobile. The FBI mentioned it additionally noticed him driving with the flag Wednesday. He was arrested on Thursday.
The charging paperwork additionally say police in New York notified the FBI final Could that Hassan had made social media posts in help of the Somali group al-Shabab. An affidavit from an agent says investigators noticed al-Shabab and Islamic State group propaganda movies on his TikTok and Fb accounts. It additionally alleges that he exchanged messages with a Fb account that encourages Somali-speaking people to journey and struggle on behalf of the Islamic State group.
FBI brokers had been watching when Hassan went to Minneapolis-St. Paul Worldwide Airport on Dec. 13, authorities say. He allegedly tried to verify in for a flight to Somalia however left after an airline worker instructed him he lacked required journey paperwork.
He allegedly tried once more Dec. 29. Brokers noticed him board a flight to Chicago, the place Customs and Border Safety officers interviewed him extensively earlier than his scheduled flight to Ethiopia however didn’t detain him. He missed the flight and returned to Minneapolis, the affidavit says.
Hassan is the newest of a number of Minnesotans suspected of leaving or making an attempt to go away the U.S. to hitch the Islamic State group in recent times, together with hundreds of fighters from different nations. In 2016 9 Minnesota males had been sentenced on federal prices of conspiring to hitch the group, and a Minnesotan who truly fought for the group in Iraq was sentenced final June to 10 years in jail.
