In light of the terrorist attack in Orlando, Minneapolis attorney Scott Johnson has a timely piece in the magazine recapping law enforcement’s case against the 10 “Minnesota men” charged with seeking to leave the United States to join ISIS in Syria.
By the time of the trial last month, six had already pleaded guilty. Another was charged in absentia and is presumed dead in Syria. Johnson writes about the prosecution of the three others—Guled Omar, Mohamed Farah, and Abdirahman Daud—and the secret recordings obtained by an informant, Abdirahman Bashir, that helped bring them down:
In hours of recordings, the defendants expressed their desire to join ISIS, their regret over the failure of their previous efforts to make it out of the United States, their commitment to waging jihad against non-believers, and their ardent wish to die as martyrs. They thrilled to the videos of ISIS butchery in the name of Allah. They talked about their communications with their friends who had made it to ISIS in Syria. And they expressed their contempt for the United States. “I can’t believe I’m driving out of the land of the kuffar,” Daud said during the road trip, using a derogatory term for infidel. “I’m going to spit on America at the border crossing. May Allah’s curse be upon you.”
Read more about the trial and Johnson’s observations from the courtroom here.
