Three residents of Lansing, Michigan, were arrested Monday afternoon for conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan charged all three with criminal conspiracy charges punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, filed in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Members of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) arrested Muse Abdikadir Muse (Muse Muse) at the Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after checking in for a flight to the first of a series of destinations on his way to Mogadishu, Somalia.
Shortly thereafter, law enforcement arrested alleged coconspirators Mohamud Abdikadir Muse (Mohamud Muse), and Mohamed Salat Haji (Haji).
All three defendants are naturalized U.S. citizens who were born in Kenya.
(Three Lansing residents have been arrested and charged with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or ISIS. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan announced the charges Tuesday. Courtesy of WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7 and YouTube. Posted on Jan 22, 2019.)
Muse Muse purchased airline tickets earlier this month to travel from Grand Rapids to Mogadishu, departing on Monday, January 21, 2019, according to the complaint affidavit.
Additionally, the complaint alleged Haji and Mohamud Muse aided in the purchase of the ticket and drove Muse Muse to the Grand Rapids airport, each knowing the true purpose of the travel was for Muse Muse to join and fight for ISIS.
The three defendants pledged allegiance to ISIS through videos they recorded themselves, asserts the complaint asserts.
Muse Muse and Haji allegedly discussed with each other their desire to join ISIS, to kill non-believers, and even to potentially use a car for a martyrdom operation to run down non-believers here in the United States if they could not travel overseas to fight for ISIS.
