Aspinwall man accused of IS ties was a ‘classic teenage boy’

A skeletal portrait of the Sterling, Va., man federal authorities have accused of obstructing a terrorism investigation began to come into focus on Monday — that of a directionless youth who converted to Islam at the end of high school, married a significantly older Muslim woman, had a child who died as an infant, and became increasingly religious until an arrest Friday that allegedly included him destroying a computer thumb drive that authorities suspect contained evidence of terrorism-related activity.

In the months before that arrest, court filings allege that Sean A. Duncan, 21, who will appear in federal court Tuesday, acted in a manner that was “indicative of an individual planning and researching how to conduct an attack,” including research into materials relating to the Islamic State group, terrorist attacks, weapons, surveillance tactics and body armor.

Now, family members are struggling to reconcile the man they had believed to be Mr. Duncan with the man federal agents say he had become.

“Sean is a very good kid. And that’s all I can really say at this point. I’m floored,” said his mother, Laurie Duncan, a real estate agent in Ocean City, Md. “Sean is a very honest and sincere child, and that’s all I can say, is that he’s a child. He’s 21.”

Mr. Duncan, who could not be reached for comment, grew up in eastern Baltimore County and, at first, was a “classic teenage boy,” recalled Zach, who is engaged to Mr. Duncan’s sister and requested that The Washington Post

withhold his last name for fear of career repercussions.

As a boy, Mr. Duncan liked video games more than sports, didn’t seem to have much ambition, and had trouble in school, Zach said. So much so that Mr. Duncan transferred from Patapsco High School to Patterson High School, where Zach said he befriended a few Muslim students and became interested in Islam.

“I accepted Islam during my last year of high school by the grace of Allah,” as Mr. Duncan later described his “journey to Islam” in an online post he published to raise money for studying Quranic Arabic at Fawakih, an Islamic educational institute in Herndon, Va. “It was the summer before my 12th grade that I began looking into Islam, specifically how to pray the salah.” He said he was struck by the “beauty” and “cleanliness” of the daily prayer and started listening to the Arabic recitation of the Koran, which, although he didn’t understand Arabic, “penetrated my heart,” causing him to fall “in love with the words of Allah.”

He called the next chapter, “Trouble on the Homefront.”

“It was very hard for me to practice my Islam for at least the first 6-12 months,” he wrote. “There is still some friction even until this day.”

Some of the friction, Zach said, involved his relationship with a woman he met in his new social network, Zakiya Sadeq, now 36, who would become his wife. “She was in her 30s, and we were trying to figure out why this woman who is also studying medicine, how did she find this 18-year-old boy who doesn’t have a job or money, and why is she interested in him?”

Mr. Duncan told the family he was going to marry Ms. Sadeq, who, according to her LinkedIn profile, obtained a medical degree at the International Islamic University Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. “We were all like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Zach said.

Through her attorney, Ms. Sadeq declined to comment.

The next month, the FBI, according to court documents, received a tip from one of Mr. Duncan’s relatives saying he “may have been radicalized, and voiced his approval of Westerners being beheaded in the Middle East.”

That year, Mr. Duncan, who had taken to wearing an Islamic robe and cap, and Ms. Sadeq moved to the Pittsburgh area, where Ms. Sadeq’s LinkedIn profile says she worked as a doctor with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She is pictured in the Fall 2017 edition of the Pennsylvania Geriatrics Society, Western Division newsletter as a presenter at the American Geriatrics Society national meeting.

Reached Monday evening by phone, UPMC spokeswoman Susan Manko said that Ms. Sadeq had no current affiliation with the hospital system or medical school and could not immediately confirm whether she was ever employed byUPMC.