- Analysis by reveals that 62 people in America have launched ISIS attacks or been accused of plotting to help terror group
- They are responsible for 64 deaths and at least 121 woundings, including the San Bernardino and Pulse massacres
- Of the attackers and alleged plotters, 21 were immigrants and a further 13 were the children of immigrants
- Thirteen Americans converted and are accused of becoming extremists – including a former cheerleader and senior Boston police officer’s son
- Prosecution documents reveal allegations of obsessions with extremist propaganda and a myriad of hate-fueled plans to slaughter U.S. citizens
The growing scale of ISIS activities inside the United States is revealed in a analysis.
A total of 62 people – overwhelmingly men – have launched attacks or been accused of taking part in the Islamic terror group’s activities in just over a year.
The 62 were responsible for 48 attacks or alleged ISIS-inspired activities – from mass stabbings to attempts to send money and munitions to Syria.
The analysis of public records shows that six ISIS-inspired attackers have died and 54 have been arrested.
The figures also show that 34 of those ISIS attackers and alleged plotters were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
They included six people who came to the U.S. as refugees from countries including Palestine and Somalia.
The number of people taken in as refugees and then accused of turning against the country which gave them sanctuary could be higher, as it was not possible to ascertain exactly how many of the alleged ISIS attackers or plotters entered America.
In total 64 people have been murdered and at least 121 wounded in the U.S. by ISIS-inspired attackers.
They included the 49 dead and 53 wounded of the Orlando nightclub attacks, as well as the 14 killed and 22 hurt by the San Bernardino shooters.
The analysis shows that 13 people linked to ISIS by the federal authorities were the children of immigrants from countries including Palestine and Pakistan.
And at least 13 were Americans who converted to Islam and took up its most extreme form.
They include a former cheerleader and the son of a senior Boston police officer, as well as an immigrant who was not deported after serving a four-year sentence for a firearms crime.
Many of those awaiting trial were caught by the FBI in stings, which the agency says is a crucial way of preventing and disrupting ISIS attacks.
Official documents reveal individuals obsessed with extremist propaganda and a myriad hate-fueled plans to slaughter fellow citizens.
The issue of how to handle the entry of immigrants and refugees has been a hot topic in the 2016 presidential race.
Earlier this month FBI director James Comey warned that as ISIS is purged from its home territory in Syria and Iraq, a ‘terrorist diaspora’ could spread across the globe.
Here are the 62 people involved in 48 separate terror-related cases in the last year identified.
Keonna Thomas is a 32-year-old mother of two from Philadelphia. She is also a religious extremist who praised ISIS on Twitter, married another extremist over Skype and eventually tried to leave America to join the terror group.
Thomas, a U.S. citizen born in Pittsburgh, allegedly plotted to leave her children and travel to Syria. But she was arrested in April 2015 as she made breakfast for her daughters, ages seven and nine — the day she planned to abandon them.
She had previously struck up an online relationship with another ISIS recruit, Abu Khalid al-Amriki.
Al-Amriki – Arabic for ‘the American’ – was formerly known as Shawn Joel Parson. The Trinidadian national lived in the States before moving to Syria in 2013. Where he rlived is unclear.
Thomas married Al-Amriki over Skype. Her online aliases included the names Fatayat Al Khilafah and ‘YoungLioness’. She told her husband it ‘would be amazing’ to participate in a suicide attack.
‘A girl can only wish,’ she said, according to court records.
Al-Amriki was killed in a drone strike in Syria in September 2015, ISIS supporters said on Twitter.
In September this year his wife pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
Jaelyn Delshaun Young, 19, was a cheerleader, honors student, and the daughter of a police officer.
She left all that behind in Starkville, Mississippi when she and her fiancé, 22-year-old psychology student Muhamma Dakhlalla, attempted to join ISIS.
Dakhlalla’s mother is from New Jersey; his father, an imam, was born in Bethlehem, Palestine. The family are reported to have lived in Mississippi for decades.
The case shocked the community of Starkville. Young, born a Christian, was a convert to Islam. When a Muslim man in Tennessee shot five U.S. servicemen in July, Young messaged an undercover FBI agent saying ‘Alhamdulillah’ – an Arabic word of praise to God. ‘The numbers of supporters are growing,’ she wrote.
She was frustrated at how long her passport was taking to arrive, delaying her trip to Syria.
‘I just want to be there 🙁 #IS’ she told an undercover FBI investigator over social media. She was arrested in August last year.
Almost exactly a year later she sobbed in court as she was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
She had been facing up to 20 years. Dakhlalla received 8 years.
Enrique Marquez was apparently an ordinary 24-year-old. The Californian cycling enthusiast had worked at Walmart before becoming a doorman at a pirate-themed neighborhood bar.
In late 2011 and 2012 the Hispanic U.S. citizen bought two semiautomatic rifles. He gave those guns to his childhood friend Syed Rizwan Farook, who had helped him convert to Islam back in 2007, prosecutors say.
Three years later Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik – a Pakistani immigrant who came here on a spousal visa – used those guns to murder 14 people and seriously injure 22 more in what became known as the San Bernardino shootings.
In December 2015 Marquez was charged with being the ‘straw purchaser’ of the assault rifles and providing material support to terrorism.
He also was charged with immigration fraud, after he allegedly underwent a sham marriage with a Russian member of Farook’s extended family to get the woman legal status in America. The woman is said to have paid Marquez $200 a month for his trouble.
If found guilty the three charges together carry a total of up to 35 years in prison.
‘CHICKEN SHOP TERRORIST’ WHO CAME AS A REFUGEE – AND IS ACCUSED OF BOMBING NEW YORK
Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, the so-called ‘chicken shop terrorist’, caused terror in New York when he allegedly planted a series of bombs last month – one of which went off.
On September 17, Rahami allegedly planted two pressure cooker bombs in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The first blew up, injuring 29; the second never detonated.
He is accused of being the man who planted another bomb in Seaside Park, New Jersey where a 5k race for military charity was supposed to be taking place. Further bombs found at a train station in Elizabeth were also his, the Justice Department says.
He was found sleeping in a shop doorway two days later and arrested after a shootout with police. He remains hospitalized for his injuries.
Rahami was seven when he and his family moved to the U.S. from Afghanistan in the 1990s as asylum seekers. He lived in Elizabeth New Jersey, above the family’s halal chicken takeaway.
His father has said that he reported his son to the FBI two years ago, after incidents in which he threatened his mother and stabbed his brother, telling them he was watching jihadi videos.
Nicholas Young, 36, of Fairfax, Virginia was a transit police officer on Washington DC’s Metro who was reported to have converted to Islam in 2006.
The FBI started watching him after Metro Transit Police told the agency in 2010 that they had ‘concerns’ about him. He had been with the force since 2003.
Over the period of surveillance, the U.S. citizen allegedly threatened FBI agents, advised suspected terrorists and toyed with joining ISIS.
In 2014 he constructed a Jihadi John get-up for Halloween, complete with a ‘headless hostage’ as a prop; on another occasion he dressed up as a Nazi, court documents said.
The tipping point came when in 2015 he allegedly emailed an FBI informant asking for advice from ISIS commanders on how to send his money overseas.
‘[U]nfortunately I have enough flags on my name that I can’t even buy a plane ticket without little alerts ending up in someone’s hands,’ he wrote, according to federal prosecutors.
Instead he bought almost $250 in gift cards which he intended to hand to ISIS fighters. The cards would be used for purchasing mobile apps to help them communicate with each other, it is alleged.
Young in fact handed the gift cards to an FBI informant, the agency says. He was charged in August and faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES ‘BETRAYED THEIR WELCOME’
Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab arrived in the United States as a refugee in 2012. The 23-year-old Palestinian, who was born in Iraq, settled in Sacramento, California, in 2014.
But in between those dates he left the U.S. and traveled to Syria, arriving sometime in November 2013. In various online accounts Al-Jayab described executing three Syrian government soldiers during his time with ISIS, it is alleged.
He returned to the United States in January. Immigration agents interviewed him in October, when he allegedly falsely said that he had gone to Turkey to visit his grandmother, and that he did not support terror groups. He now faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of attempting to provide support to ISIS.
Al-Jayab was dubbed ‘The Hipster Terrorist’ when a photo of him sporting a beard and checked shirt emerged.
A man whom Al-Jayab had allegedly promised to recruit was also arrested. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, of Houston, Texas, was another Iraqi-born Palestinian.
He entered the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee in 2009 and became a permanent resident in 2011. Al-Jayab taught him how to use weapons and helped him sneak into Syria, prosecutors claim.
Al Hardan faces up to 25 years in prison if found guilty of attempting to provide material support for terrorists, as well as unlawfully procuring citizenship by failing to mention his alleged ties to terror groups.
NATURALIZED IMMIGRANT ‘READY TO F***ING GO’ TO JOIN ISIS
Sajmir Alimehmeti, a 22-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Albania, was ‘ready to f***ing go’ to join ISIS, according to federal prosecutors.
But the Bronx, New York, resident was worried about traveling to Syria as he had been twice denied entry to the United Kingdom, it is claimed.
British authorities had refused him entry when they found images on his phone of him with an ISIS flag, as well as camouflage pants and nunchucks in his luggage.
He told two men that his name was ‘already in the system’, and so he thought he needed to get a new passport, documents say. The two men were in fact FBI informants.
According to prosecutors, Alimehmeti, aka Abdul Qawii, applied for the new passport in 2015 with the excuse that his old one had been lost on a train.
But allegedly he was applying for a new one because he thought that the previous one, with its two rejection stamps from UK authorities, would attract suspicion.
In May he was charged in Manhattan federal court with passport fraud and providing support to ISIS. He faces up to 20 years prison if found guilty of supporting a terrorist group and 10 years if guilty of passport fraud.
Court documents show his alleged enthusiasm for ISIS and say that he listened to music videos produced by the terrorist organization for inspiration, as well as for motivation while working out. One showed militants beheading prisoners.
‘He was a Bronx kid into hip hop and then it changed,’ a neighbor said.
HOUSEWIFE WHO ‘TWEETED CALL TO KILL SERVICEMEN’
Safya Roe Yassin, of Buffalo, Missouri, had as many as 97 Twitter accounts, which she is accused of using to support ISIS and express glee at the San Bernardino shootings.
The FBI says it acted after she retweeted personal information of two agents with the statement ‘Wanted to kill’, as well as links that contained photos, addresses and even credit card information for U.S. army and State Department employees.
Another retweet of the details of 150 U.S. Air Force personnel had a quote asking followers to ‘slay them wherever you may come upon them’, prosecutors allege.
An informant had previously called the FBI to allege that Yassin had ‘become convinced that ISIL is going to save the world’.
She allegedly told the unnamed individual to divorce a non-Muslim spouse and to get rid of all dogs and non-Muslim friends.
Yassin is reported to have been born to a white mother and a father who immigrated to the U.S. from Jerusalem. She had two children, whom she home-schooled because they were bullied for being Muslim, her lawyer claimed.
The 39-year-old was charged with threatening FBI agents after being arrested in February this year.
Yassin faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty of making ‘a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another’.
HEARTLAND CONVERT WHO ‘SPOKE TO ISIS IN SYRIA’
Will Skelton, 23,was a cross country and basketball enthusiast who attended high school in Des Moines, Iowa.
But while a student he is reported to have become ‘obsessed’ with Islamic culture, changing his clothing and brought a prayer rug to school. At one point police were called after he bragged about having a hit list of students and a plan to blow up the school, KCCI reported.
After graduating he changed his name to Abdul Raheem Habil Ali-Skelton and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, known as a breeding ground for ISIS recruits.
He was already facing charges of making a false statement to FBI agents when he marched into a Walgreens and allegedly threatened to ‘shoot up’ the store.
He accused a man in the store of having a relationship with his girlfriend, threatened to hit him with a bottle, and then claimed to be part of a terrorist organization and declared he would ‘blow up’ the store, it is alleged.
Ali-Skelton was already facing separate charges relating to his contact with ISIS members in Syria. He told FBI investigators he had last spoken to members back in May or June 2015, when in fact he had spoken to them in July.
He now faces three felony charges of five years each.
SON OF IMMIGRANTS WHO WENT TO JOIN ISIS
Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, was born in America to Palestinian immigrants. But after meeting a girl in Turkey the Alexandria, Virginia resident decided to follow her to Iraq.
And so he swapped America for Mosul – then made an extraordinary public recanting of his choice.
But life under the ISIS regime was not to his liking. He told Kurdistan 24 that life was too tough under the regime and he wanted to return to the States.
‘It was pretty hard to live in Mosul. It’s not like the Western countries, you know, it’s very strict. There’s no smoking,’ he moaned.
‘My message to the American people is that life in Mosul is really very bad. The people who control Mosul don’t represent a religion. Daesh [ISIS] does not represent a religion. I don’t see them as good Muslims.’
He added that he ‘didn’t really support’ the terrorist organization’s ideology. He escaped from the group and was later captured by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.
The video alerted the FBI to his case, and in June Khweis faced federal charges that could see a sentence of up to 20 years.
‘It’s a lot better than a prison in Erbil,’ he said, referring to the city in the Kurdistan region of Iraq where he had been held.
SIX IMMIGRANTS’ ‘BOMB AND MURDER PLOT’
Azizjon Rakhmatov, 28, a citizen of Uzbekistan, was one of six men from Brooklyn, New York facing terrorism-related charges.
He hadallegedly tried to help two of the men – Akhror Saidakhmetov and falafel restaurant worker Abdurasul Juraboev – join ISIS in the Middle East.
The men had allegedly decided that if they didn’t make it abroad for jihad, they would kill President Obama or set off a bomb in Coney Island.
Both Saidakhmetov, a Kazakh national, and Juraboev, from Uzbekistan, had been granted permanent residency in the United States.
Rakhmatov and three other co-defendants – Abror Habibov, Dilkhayot Kasimov and Akmal Zakirov – were charged with funding the efforts of two other men to join ISIS in Syria.
Rakhmatov, who was arrested a year after his friends, faces up to 50 years in prison.
IMMIGRANTS’ SON’S UNIVERSITY STABBING SPREE
Faisal Mohammad, 18, stabbed four people in a rampage on a Californian college campus before he was shot down by police.
The computer science and engineering major burst into a classroom at the University of California, Merced in November and wounded four people.
‘He had a smile on his face, he was having fun,’ a construction worker who helped stop the attack told a reporter.
When it happened, authorities said nothing about a terror link and claimed it was an apparent dispute over a study group.
In fact, the FBI said, Mohammad – a Santa Clara, California resident born in the U.S. to Pakistani immigrants – had been inspired by ISIS.
Investigators found propaganda from the group on his laptop but no evidence that he was directly working with a terrorist group.
ARMY DESERTER TOLD FBI ‘I’M AN ISIS SOLDIER NOW’
Daniel Seth Franey, aka Abu Dawuud, 33, served in the Army between 2002 and 2008, and is reported to have been stationed with air defense artillery units in Texas and South Korea.
But he was officially discharged and came to the FBI’s attention after a neighbor in the small town of Montesano, Washington said he ‘regularly talked’ about his support for ISIS.
He later told an undercover agent that he had ‘deserted’ the army, FBI filings say. He served as a ‘Patriot Missile Launching Station Enhanced Operator and Maintainer’.
In February Franey, a U.S. citizen, was arrested and charged with three counts of unlawful possession of firearms and two counts of unlawful possession of machine guns. He faces up to fifty years in prison.
In an alleged FBI sting, he was said to have been secretly recorded describing terrorist Osama bin Laden as a ‘diamond’ and a ‘beautiful man’. An undercover agent is said to have supplied him with guns and cash and even took him for a road trip along the West Coast.
‘I consider myself an ISIS soldier as much as the brothers over there,’ he allegedly told the agent.
ISLAMIC CONVERT ‘AMASSED AN ARSENAL’
Sebastian Gregerson, also known as Abdurrahman Bin Mikaayl, was apparently planning something big, it is alleged.
The 29-year-old former Target employee is from Detroit, Michigan, and a married father of twin boys. He converted to Islam after high school.
He is said to have amassed an arsenal of weapons over a period of eight months, including a range of guns and knives, commercial-grade road spikes, camouflage vests and military training videos.
He was arrested by the FBI this year after he allegedly tried to buy grenades from an undercover agent. The agency said that his weapons cache was ‘unlikely’ to be required simply for recreational use.
He has not been charged with any acts of terror, but he has been charged with possessing a destructive device and receiving explosive materials without a proper license.
REFUGEE WHO STABBED NINE IN MINNESOTA MALL
Dahir Adan, a 20-year-old Somali refugee who lived in St Cloud, Minnesota, is reported to have told his family he was going to go to the mall to buy an iPhone 7.
Instead Adan went on a rampage in the Minnesota mall.
He stabbed or cut ten people in the September incident – none of them seriously – before a hero off-duty cop shot him dead.
ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack, calling the recent college student a ‘soldier of the Islamic State’.
At least one victim said that Adan asked him if he was Muslim before stabbing him.
Adan arrived in the United States from Kenya at the age of 2 with his family.
MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE COLLAPSE SURVIVOR TOOK COMPENSATION AND JOINED ISIS
Mohamed Amiin Ali Roble was lucky to survive when, aged 10, the Minneapolis bridge along which his school bus was driving collapsed. The bus plunged 30 feet; 13 people were killed in the 2007 accident.
In 2014 Roble received $91,564 in settlement money, most of which came from the Minnesota state government.
Just weeks later Roble, 20, who was born in the United States and lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, flew to Istanbul. There he withdrew more than half the cash he had been awarded.
He never showed for his flight back to the United States. Instead he had allegedly gone to Syria, with his uncle Abdi Nur.
The bridge settlement money allegedly went towards buying vehicles for ISIS. As of August, he and his uncle now face terror charges; nine other Minnesota men have already been convicted.
Roble, who is of Somali descent, is believed to be still alive and fighting in Syria.
TELEMARKETER ‘LIED TO THE FBI ABOUT WATCHING ISIS VIDEOS’
Robert Blake Jackson, a telemarketer from Pensacola, Florida, allegedly viewed ISIS and other terrorist-related videos on his office computer.
Jackson, a 31-year-old U.S. citizen, was fired for his viewing activity, but the FBI charged him in July with falsely denying these activities to agents. He faces up to five years in prison.
MARINE VET ‘TRIED TO JOIN ISIS’ WITH FRIENDS’ HELP
‘Sometimes you just have to cut heads off’ is what Gregory Hubbard, 52, allegedly told an FBI informant.
Hubbard, aka Jibreel, was an ex-Marine and a sculptor born in Albany, New York. He and two friends, all from Palm Beach County, Florida, are said to have referred to ISIS as ‘the soccer team’ and talked about ‘playing soccer’ when they discussed joining it.
The three men – all U.S. citizens – were charged in July with trying to provide help to ISIS.
Hubbard was arrested at Miami airport after allegedly telling an FBI informant that he wanted to join ISIS in Syria.
The friend who drove him to the airport, Darren Arness Jackson – also known as Daoud, 50 – was also arrested, as was Dayne Antani Christian, 31, also known as Shakur.
They are awaiting trial.
IMMIGRANT WHO WASN’T DEPORTED AFTER GUN TERM
Elias Gebreweit Isaac, a 27-year-old from Santa Rosa, California, had been out of prison for just two weeks when he was hauled before law enforcement once again.
Police said that Isaac had told them he wanted to join ISIS and threatened to confront them with a gun if he wasn’t deported.
Why he was not deported after the felony sentence is unclear – but Santa Rosa is the seat of Sonoma County, which has ‘sanctuary’ status, meaning it does not fully co-operate with federal immigration enforcement laws.
Isaac was born in Sudan but left as a four-year-old child.
He had just finished serving four years for illegally possessing a firearm, for which he was released in July.
Isaac is reported to have appeared in court shackled to a wheelchair in case of further outbursts.
‘They were pure thoughts,’ his lawyer told a judge. ‘No acts.’
‘SHOT COP BECAUSE OF HIS ISLAMIC BELIEFS’
Edward Archer, 30, is accused of firing round after round at Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett in January.
The security guard and American citizen, who was on parole for another offense at the time, emptied his stolen police-issued handgun as he fired at Hartnett, prosecutors say. He even reached through the car window to shoot Hartnett again.
Three of the 11 bullets hit Hartnett. Although badly wounded, Hartnett managed to chase Archer and shot him in the buttocks.
Archer later told police he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, it is alleged.
The attack took place just four days before Archer was due to appear at a hearing for an armed assault that took place a few blocks from the shooting in January 2012. He had pleaded guilty.
Archer had previously spent time in prison and may have had a prison conversion to Islam, CBS news reported.
Police said Archer, from Yeadon, Philadelphia, attacked because ‘the police defend laws that he believes are contrary to Islam’.
He faces a range of charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault and a weapons offense.
THE MAN WHO LIKED ‘BODIES, BLOOD AND BEHEADINGS’
Haris Qamar, 25, was a storage company worker from Burke, Virginia.
In his spare time he was also a fervent ISIS supporter, tweeting praise from over 60 accounts with handles including the term ‘newerajihadi’, it is alleged.
He also built up a list of landmarks in Washington D.C. and took photos of them which he thought would be used in a video to encourage attacks, prosecutors say.
‘Bye bye DC, stupid ass kufar, kill’em all,’ he allegedly said, using a derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims.
He talked about how he would ‘make a slurpee’ out of the blood of Sunni Muslims whom he said blamed their women for being raped. ‘Stick a f***ing knife and just make a slurpee out of their blood,’ he told an informant, documentssay.
In 2014 Brooklyn-born Qamar tried to join ISIS but his parents took away his passport, he allegedly told an FBI informant. He also told the informant that he loved ‘bodies, blood and beheadings’, court filings show.
Qamar is also accused of saying that he watched a video of the murder of a Kurdish person, and recalled liking the ‘cracking sound made when the individual’s spinal cord was torn’.
He faces up to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiring to provide support to ISIS.
BOSTON COP’S SON ‘WANTED SECOND MARATHON BOMBING’
Captain Robert Ciccolo was one of the first responders to the 2013 Boston marathon bombing, which killed three and wounded over 200.
That didn’t stop his 23-year-old son Alexander, of Adams, Massachusetts, from allegedly planning a copycat attack. He planned to attack a college, and built up a weapons cache and constructed bombs in his apartment, prosecutors say.
Ciccolo, an Islamic convert with a long history of mental illness and who allegedly called America ‘Satan’, was observed by the FBI buying at least one pressure cooker at a Walmart. Pressure cooker bombs were used to devastating effect at the Marathon bombings, killing three and injuring 264.
His parents, from whom he is estranged, turned him over to police after noticing suspicious activity. He was arrested in July last year.
TEEN ‘KILLED NEIGHBOR FOR CASH TO BUY GUN’
