New York – Upstate NY Pizza Shop Owner Admits Trying To Recruit People For ISIS

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    FILE - In this Sept. 18, 2014 photo, Mufid Elfgeeh is taken out of Federal Court in Rochester, N.Y.    Elfgeeh,  a naturalized U.S. citizen, helped arrange travel and funding and put one recruit in touch with an English-speaking Islamic State contact in Iraq via Facebook, authorities said on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015.(Carlos Ortiz/Democrat & Chronicle via AP)  New York – An upstate New York pizza shop owner admitted Thursday he tried to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria.

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    Mufid Elfgeeh, 31, a naturalized U.S. citizen, helped arrange travel and funding and put one recruit in touch with an English-speaking Islamic State contact in Iraq via Facebook, authorities said.

    Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization under a plea agreement that recommends a sentence of just under 22 ½ years in prison.

    The Yemen-born Rochester resident was arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in May 2014 after buying two handguns and silencers that investigators say he planned to use to kill returning U.S. soldiers. U.S. Attorney William Hochul Jr. said Elfgeeh was one of the first Islamic State recruiters ever arrested in the United States.

    “Elfgeeh wanted to be a source of support for violent jihad and serve as a facilitator for violent jihadists who wanted to travel overseas and fight,” the plea agreement said. “In Elfgeeh’s own postings and messages on social media and statements … Elfgeeh stated that a person who helps or sponsors a fighter to engage in violent jihad obtains the same religious rewards from Allah (God) as the fighter himself.”

    Under the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to dismiss a charge of attempting to kill military members and weapons counts, as well as charges of assaulting three sheriff’s deputies while in custody.

    Sentencing was scheduled for March 17.

    While running his Rochester pizza shop, Elfgeeh used Twitter, WhatsApp and 23 Facebook accounts to seek donations and declare his support for violent jihad and allegiance to the Islamic State and its leaders, court documents said.

    He bought a laptop computer and camera for two recruits for a planned 2014 trip and paid $240 to help one of them get a birth certificate and expedited passport, authorities said. He wired $600 to a third person in Yemen to help pay for the person’s travel to Syria. Two of the recruits were FBI informants. One had been encouraged by Elfgeeh to join in fighting overseas in 2013, the plea agreement said.

    “As it did in this case, the public should continue to report to law enforcement any suspicious individuals or activities and thereby hasten the demise of these killers,” Hochul said.


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    12 Comments
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    8 years ago

    This is unfair islamophobia! Racial profiling! muslim Americans LOVE America! It can’t be that even one of them as celebrating 9/11! Can’t be. Obama told us so!

    8 years ago

    This is for the liberal idiots here who say we shouldn’t be closing off immigration to get our security act together, as Trump recommends! Nuts jobs.

    HankM
    HankM
    8 years ago

    We really need to welcome more of these Moslem refugees into our country, after all, who else will make us pizza?

    puppydogs
    puppydogs
    8 years ago

    22.5 years, that’s it??? How does he not get a life sentence??

    8 years ago

    lock him up and throw away the key – he should now occupy Pollards cell

    Texas_Joe
    Texas_Joe
    8 years ago

    See! A Christian terrorist! Take that Donald and Ted!

    bennyt
    bennyt
    8 years ago

    From now on, US immigration officials should ban all Muslim pizza makers from entering the US.