Minneapolis – A minneapolis man who supposedly expressed admiration for him Truck attack in New Orleans That killed 14 people has been accused of trying to join the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors announced on Friday.
Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 22, made his first appearance in court for a position to try to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was ordered retained without bail until a detention hearing on March 5.
The federal chief defender of Minnesota, Katherian Roe, said his office will represent him, but refused to comment on the case.
The criminal complaint against Hassan, a naturalized American citizen, alleges that he tried twice in December to travel from Minnesota to Somalia to join the group but was not successful. He says he said he was going to visit the family but that he had none there.
Prosecutors said that FBI’s investigation established that Hassan expressed public support for the group in multiple publications on social networks and also praised Shamsud-Din Jabbar in Tiktok for the attack of New Orleans.
The researchers say that Jabbar, a 42 -year -old Texas native and veteran of the United States army, published videos that profess loyalty to the Islamic State group and the intention of damaging others before attacking a multitude of New Year’s Juerguistas in Bourbon Street on January 1. The police triggered him fatally during an exchange of shooting on the scene.
Hassan also published a video last week, by driving while holding a flag of the Islamic State group inside his vehicle. The FBI said he also observed him driving with the flag on Wednesday. It was arrested Thursday.
The loading documents also say that the police in New York notified the FBI last May that Hassan had made publications on social networks in support of the Somalí Al-Shabab group. An Agent Avis statement says that the researchers saw Videos of propaganda from Al-Shabab and the Islamic State group in their Tiktok and Facebook accounts. He also alleges that he exchanged messages with a Facebook account that encourages Somali -speaking people to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State.
The FBI agents were watching when Hassan went to Minneapolis-ST. Paul International Airport on December 13, authorities say. He allegedly tried to verify a flight to Somalia, but left after an employee of an airline told him that he lacked required travel documents.
Supposedly tried again on December 29. The agents saw him address a flight to Chicago, where Customs officers and border protection interviewed him widely before his scheduled flight to Ethiopia, but did not stop him. The flight was lost and returned to Minneapolis, says the affidavit.
Hassan is the last of Several suspicious minnesotanos to leave or try to leave the United States to join the Islamic State group in recent years, along with thousands of combatants from other countries. In 2016, Nine Minnesota men were sentenced by federal conspiracy positions to join the group, and a minnesotano who really fought for the group in Iraq was sentenced last June 10 years in prison.
