Trial reveals scary links between ISIS, U.S.

This summer brought an end to the most significant Islamic State-related terror trial to date, a trial that had armed federal agents providing courthouse security and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling the courtroom. After 17 days of testimony, in early June a jury in Minnesota found three Somali-American men guilty of conspiracy to commit murder overseas and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group.

Minneapolis is home to an estimated 100,000 first- and second-generation Somalis, a primarily Muslim population. Federal prosecutors built a case against 10 members of that community who wanted to go to Syria to join Islamic State (ISIS). Before the trial began in May, six of the men pleaded guilty. One evaded capture and is thought to have died in Syria.

The three others decided to take their chances at trial: 22-year-old Mohamed Farah, 22-year-old Abdirahman Daud, and 21-year-old Guled Omar. Defense lawyers argued the young men were just big talkers, not killers. They were impressionable but had no criminal records. And becoming enamored with ISIS is not a crime, no matter how distasteful others find it. Their families claimed the federal government entrapped the young men.

But a jury of seven women and five men saw differently and convicted them on all counts. The government built much of its case around a conspirator who was not charged because he became an informant. He recorded hours of conversation with and among the defendants. Minneapolis attorney Scott Johnson, who attended the trial, called the recordings shocking.

“The recordings included a recording of these guys watching one of these bloodthirsty ISIS videos. And listening to it, you could hear with your own ears how excited these guys were at the prospect of engaging in the kind of murder and mayhem that ISIS conducts in the name of jihad,” Johnson said. “It’s true that watching the videos by itself is not a crime. But these guys were inspired by the videos to want to commit the crimes that are portrayed in the videos. And you could hear it yourself just sitting in the courtroom with these recordings.”

The men planned to use fake passports to travel to Mexico and then Syria. The informant led them to a rendezvous in San Diego under the guise of picking up the passports. An FBI agent was waiting to arrest them.

Not only did the men plan to travel to Syria, they also wanted to teach ISIS how to “reverse engineer that trip and bring ISIS back through Mexico to Minnesota,” Johnson said. “That really raised eyebrows and really warrants some attention: the desire of these folks to carry on the jihad at home.”

The trial underscores the concern Minnesotans have about terrorism.

“The local Minneapolis FBI office devotes an enormous amount of resources to the issue of terrorism and preventing it,” Johnson said. “The threat is evolving beyond the FBI’s ability to monitor it.”

Listen to “Legal Docket” on the Sept. 5, 2016, episode of The World and Everything in It.