(Washington, D.C.) — The FBI has arrested a South Carolina man who joined the Islamic State, was conspiring to commit acts of unspeakable terror against Americans, and had just purchased a ticket to fly to the Middle East to get training and experience.
He was arrested in the Charleston, S.C., airport, just before boarding. (see details below)
Now consider this: in the past three years, 220 people have been arrested in the United States for allegedly being part of ISIS plots. Last year alone, the number was 37, or an average of three per month.
Imagine the horrors that could have been inflicted inside the homeland if these 220 terrorists hadn’t been identified and captured in time.
The news comes amidst heart-wrenching images of Syrian children who this week suffocated to death, foaming at the mouth, because chemical weapons — sarin gas — were used to kill them and their families. Didn’t the Obama administration, the Russians and the U.N. promise all the chemical weapons had been removed from Syria?
I wish this were only fiction. Tragically, the carnage in Syria and threat to the homeland are all too real. Please be praying for the President and his advisors to know how best to deal with the crisis in Syria, and how best to improve homeland security. Please pray for victims in Syria and their families. And please join me in thanking the Lord for the brave and tireless men and women of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement — we owe them a great deal.
Excerpts from the Charlotte Observer:
- An 18-year-old South Carolina man arrested last week on an ISIS-related charge dreamed of replicating the Orlando, Fla., massacre but decided he could better serve by joining the terrorist group in the Middle East where he could kill Americans, the FBI says.
- Zakaryia Abdin….who formerly lived near Charlotte, was arrested Thursday at the Charleston airport, where he was scheduled to depart for Jordan.
- Two years ago…Abdin and another unnamed suspect were charged with plotting to rob a gun store in North Carolina, then attack troops at military bases near Raleigh….
- Prosecutors say Abdin had been conspiring online for weeks with an undercover FBI agent posing as a operative for the Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS or ISIL, about his plans to travel to the Middle East to fight. Otherwise, he would commit a terrorist act at home in support of ISIS, the FBI says. Either way, his preferred targets were fellow Americans, a newly unsealed FBI affidavit says….
- “I want you to place me on the frontlines just to fight Al Amrikan (the Americans),” Abdin wrote on March 14. “I will fight them until death, I swear, I swear, I swear.”
- The next day, Abdin asked the agent if ISIS had any Americans the group planned to torture and kill on video, as it had with other captives. He volunteered to be the executioner, the affidavit says.
- “I want to be the one to send the message because they will know who I am and I want them to see … Save him for me, ahki (friend) … It will be a strong message.”
- According to the affidavit, Abdin, a resident of Ladson, S.C., at the time of his arrest, believed he was being watched and occasionally followed. If thwarted from traveling to the Middle East, he volunteered to kill at home….
- He is the latest of almost 220 people arrested on ISIS charges in the past three years. Almost half of those charged were planning to leave the States to join ISIS operations or had already done so, according to the George Washington University Program on Extremism….
- Abdin appeared torn about leaving his mother. He wrote the undercover agent and asked if he could send a picture of himself to her after he arrived in Egypt to fight.
- “I told her I am just going on a simple vacation … When I arrive it will break her heart if I do not return and she does not know where I am,” the affidavit says. “She has every right to know that I have chosen this path and she will at least know where I am and I will not return.”
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