
A former National Guardsman was arrested after allegedly offering to get weapons for what he believed was going to be an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attack on U.S. soil, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 26, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Sierra Leone and now living in Virginia, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of attempting to provide material support to ISIS and appeared in court Tuesday afternoon, according to a Justice Department news release.
{mosads}According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint against Jalloh, a member of ISIS who has since died brokered a meeting in March between Jalloh and someone who was actually an FBI informant. The ISIS member was plotting an attack on U.S. soil and hoped to have Jalloh and the informant help.
Jalloh met with the informant twice, once in April and once in May, according to the affidavit. At the April meeting, he told the informant that he quit the Army National Guard after listening to online lectures by Anwar al-Aulaqi, a dead leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
He also told the informant that he recently took a six-month trip to Africa, where he met ISIS members in Nigeria and the ISIS member that facilitated the meeting with the informant, according to the affidavit.
During the conversation, he also praised the gunman that killed five military members in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July 2015, calling him “a very good man,” the affidavit says.
Furthermore, the affidavit says, he said “he thinks about conducting an attack all the time, and he was close to doing so at one point” and that he wanted to conduct an attack in the style of the Fort Hood, Texas, shooter who killed 13 people in 2009.
During the May meeting, Jalloh asked about a timeline for the attack, said it should be done during Ramadan and offered to make a monetary donation to ISIS, according to the affidavit.
Jalloh later sent $500 to someone he believed would use the money to help recruits traveling to join ISIS but who was actually an undercover FBI employee, according to the affidavit.
In June, Jalloh allegedly traveled to North Carolina in a failed attempt to get weapons to use in the planned attack, according to the affidavit. He had previously bought a handgun in February, as well.
On Friday, he also tried to buy a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle in Virginia, but did not have the needed forms of ID, according to the affidavit. He went back Saturday and bought a Stag Arms SAl 5.56 caliber rifle, which was rendered inoperable before he left.
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