MIAMI (AP) — A U.S. citizen who moved his household to Syria to hitch the Islamic State terrorist group has been sentenced to twenty years in federal jail.
Emraan Ali, 55, a U.S. citizen born in Trinidad and Tobago, was sentenced Tuesday in Miami federal court docket, based on court docket data. He pleaded responsible in November to conspiring to supply materials assist to a overseas terrorist group.
In response to court docket data, Ali moved his household from Trinidad and Tobago to Brazil, after which to Turkey and finally Syria in March 2015. He falsely informed his youngsters that they had been happening trip however truly meant to hitch IS, prosecutors stated.
After arriving in Syria, IS registered Ali and his household, and Ali underwent IS non secular and navy coaching with different English audio system, officers stated. The coaching included instruction on the operation of assorted automated weapons such because the AK-47 assault rifle and PKC machine gun.
Ali was finally discharged from fight obligation and labored in residential development for IS within the group’s then-de facto capital of Raqqa, investigators stated. Ali additionally grew to become a service provider and started shopping for and promoting livestock, vehicles, weapons, weapons equipment and telephones to and from different IS members. Ali additionally supplied cash remitting companies to different Trinidadian IS fighters in Syria and donated his personal cash to IS members to assist the IS trigger.
Ali and his household relocated inside Syria a number of instances through the years, officers stated. Ali and his son, 22-year-old Jihad Ali, surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces near Baghuz in March 2019, over the last sustained Islamic State group battles to keep up territory in Syria, officers stated. They had been later transferred to FBI custody and returned to the U.S. The son, who was born in New York and started IS navy and non secular coaching at 15 years outdated, was beforehand sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Regardless of their defeat in Syria in March 2019, the militant group’s sleeper cells nonetheless perform lethal assaults in each Syria and Iraq the place they as soon as declared a “caliphate.”