DENVER (CN) — A Colorado man pleaded not guilty before a federal magistrate on Thursday to a single charge of aiding the Islamic State group, a foreign terrorist organization based in Iraq.
Eighteen-year-old Humzah Mashkoor, of Westminster, was arrested on Dec. 19 after he passed through security at Denver International Airport with plans to fly to the United Arab Emirates and journey on to Afghanistan join the IS terrorist group, according to an arrest affidavit.
Mashkoor faces a single charge of "attempting to provide material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations," which has a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The U.S. Secretary of State declared Al-Qaida in Iraq to be a foreign terrorist organization in 2004, then added the Islamic State of Iraq in 2014.
Since IS leader Abu Bakr called on Muslims to embark on “hijrah,” meaning to emigrate and join the organization, on July 4, 2014, an estimated 25,000 have journeyed to Iraq and Syria, including 4,500 Westerners and 250 Americans.
Federal investigators began tracking Mashkoor last year based on a suspicious activity referral from a social media platform, but only contacted his family after he arrived at the airport with a ticket to the United Arab Emirates.
Outside the courtroom, Mashkoor’s defense attorney Thomas Durkin questioned why the FBI didn’t try to intervene earlier.
"Instead they waited until he turned 18 to arrest him at the airport,” said Durkin, who practices with the Chicago firm Durkin & Roberts.
Durkin said there is a double standard between the way the government treats Muslim juveniles and non-Muslim youth like Shannon Conley, an Arvada, Colorado, woman sentenced to four years in prison on similar charges.
“They went to her parents three or four times before she decided to try to leave,” Durkin noted. “We don’t intend to try this case in the newspapers, but this is not the case the government thinks it is.”
According to the arrest affidavit, Mashkoor used different email addresses and usernames, to post content online praising IS. To evade detection from algorithms, investigators say he used coded phrases, referring to emigration as a “vacation,” to IS supporters as “brothers,” and even spelling the organization's name with dollar signs as “I$I$.”
Mashkoor told an informant that his family had immigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan, according to the arrest affidavit. In making plans to join IS, Mashkoor obtained travel vaccines and studied how to use cryptocurrency.
Investigators say Mashkoor told the informant he hoped to find a wife and to fight for IS, but that he would be willing to die as a martyr or carry out an attack in the U.S.
Mashkoor has been diagnosed with functional autism and not graduate from high school.
Several members of Mashkoor’s family packed the gallery of a wood-paneled courtroom in the Byron Rogers Federal Building in downtown Denver for the hearing.
U.S. Attorney Laura Cramer-Babycz is leading the prosecution.
A trial will likely be scheduled in the coming months.
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