A Minneapolis, Minnesota, man was arrested and charged earlier this week with trying to give material aid to the Islamic State terror group.
Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan is accused of trying to travel to Somalia to join the terrorist group on two separate occasions in December, the Justice Department said in a release Friday.
Mr. Hassan, an ethnic Somali, was born in Kenya to parents from Somalia. He lived in Amarillo, Texas, and moved to Minneapolis in 2023, according to an affidavit from FBI agent Scott Zimmerman, though the document does not say when Mr. Hassan and his family moved to the United States.
Mr. Hassan said that he was traveling to the African nation to see family, even though he does not have family in Somalia and was taking his high school diploma, birth certificate and naturalization certificate, the Justice Department said.
The first set of flights Mr. Hassan tried to take would have brought him from Minneapolis to Garoowe, Somalia, by way of Chicago and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A ticketing agent told him that, without a scan of a passport of someone in Somalia, he would not be able to fly there, and he ultimately left the Minneapolis airport, according to the affidavit.
His second attempt came after he bought a Somali visa with flights heading out of the same set of airports. Though he was able to reach Chicago O’Hare International Airport, he was met there by Customs and Border Protection agents.
Mr. Hassan told them that he was going to Somalia to meet someone he claimed was his uncle, Ali Sheick Abdulkadir, but admitted later in his interview with customs agents that Mr. Abdulkadir was not his uncle and that they had never met, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Hassan also did not have tickets to come back the other direction, and told customs agents that he did not know how he would pay for passage to Mogadishu, Somalia, and from there to Doha, Qatar, and the U.S. He said he was planning to come back in January.
When pressed by customs agents about pro-ISIS content on social media accounts he initially denied having, Mr. Hassan admitted that he was an ISIS supporter who wanted all Muslims to live under the rule of a single caliphate.
He ended up missing his flight to Ethiopia and subsequently flew back to Minneapolis.
Over the course of their investigation into him, the FBI also found that Mr. Hassan made public posts on social media in support of ISIS and communicated with an account for the “Manjaniq Media Center” that encourages people to travel and join ISIS.
Mr. Hassan praised New Orleans terrorist attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar and also posted videos of himself driving around with an ISIS flag visible, as well as one where he had a visible knife, the Justice Department said.
Mr. Hassan has been charged with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and has been ordered to stay in custody until a detention hearing at a later date.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.