Homegrown terror threat grows
An Ohio man is accused of training with Islamic militants abroad and returning to the USA in the hopes of carrying out a deadly assignment — the latest suspected terrorist wannabe to be nabbed by federal authorities.
Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 23, trained in Syria to handle weapons and explosives, engage in hand-to-hand combat and break into houses, a federal indictment says. He was instructed by a cleric to return to the USA and commit an act of mass destruction, the indictment says.
Authorities say Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is one of several antiAmerican terrorist hopefuls who returned to the U.S. with a murderous mission. In the past year, dozens of Americans have sought to join the Islamic State, also called ISIL or ISIS.
The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury in Columbus, refers to several “private conversations” between Mohamud and his brother, Abdifatah Aden, that discuss Mohamud’s plans to join a terrorist group. His brother had joined Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al- Qaeda, the indictment says.
“Identifying and neutralizing the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters who return to the United States is one of the National Security Division’s highest priorities,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin says in a statement.
Mohamud is the second Ohio man to be arrested this year in connection with a plot. Christopher Cornell, an alleged ISIL sympathizer from Green Township, was arrested after buying two semiautomatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.