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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Ex-National Guardsman Faces Terrorism Charge

(CN) — A former member of the Army National Guard was arrested over Independence Day weekend and charged with trying to help Islamic State terrorists by buying guns for a potential attack.

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 26, was arrested Sunday after buying an assault rifle in northern Virginia as part of an alleged plan to conduct an attack on U.S. soil, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

He is charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

Prosecutors say a now-deceased ISIL member introduced Jalloh to someone believed to be willing to help carry out a terrorist attack in the United States. That person, however, was an FBI informant.

Jalloh allegedly met with the confidential human source, or CHS, twice earlier this year, telling the informant that he quit the Army National Guard after listening to online lectures from former al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

Jalloh told the CHS he met with ISIL leaders in Nigeria during a six-month trip to Africa, prosecutors allege.

A 21-page affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Jalloh says he told the informant that he knew how to shoot guns and praised the shooter who killed five military members in Chattanooga, Tenn., last summer.

"Later in the conversation, Jalloh said that he thinks about conducting an attack all the time, and he was close to doing so at one point," according to the affidavit from FBI agent Nicholas Caslen.

Jalloh told the CHS in May that he thought it would be best to plan an attack for the month of Ramadan, prosecutors say. He allegedly gave a $500 donation meant for ISIL to an undercover FBI employee.

He then went to North Carolina in June and unsuccessfully tried to buy guns. On Saturday, he allegedly bought an assault rifle from a gun dealership in Virginia, which led to his arrest.

"Unbeknownst to Jalloh, the rifle was rendered inoperable before he left the dealership with the weapon," a Justice Department press release states. "Jalloh was arrested the following day and the FBI seized the rifle."

Jalloh faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.

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