The US authorities have arrested a teenager at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport as he was attempting to fly to Turkey to join the Islamic State terror group.
Nineteen-year-old Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a US citizen living in suburban Chicago, has been charged with trying to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation. The charge he faces carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
News of the arrest, effected on October 4 as Khan passed through through security screening, comes a day after FBI chief James Comey spoke of at least 12 American nationals fighting for ISIS in Syria. Some other reports have estimated the number of Americans who have joined various Islamic radical groups in Syria at as high as 100.
Khan, described by some neighbours and attendees at a mosque as a “nice, polite young man”, wrote that he was leaving the United States and was on his way to join ISIS, according to a criminal complaint filed in a Chicago court.
Khan even invited his family to join him in the three-page letter, which authorities found in his bedroom. It, however, warned them not to tell anyone about his travel plans, saying any such action “will jeopardize not only the safety of us but our family as well”.
A search of Khan’s home led to recovery of documents expressing support for ISIS and jihadists, the US Attorney’s office said. These included drawings of the black ISIS flag and a notebook including a sketch of an ISIS fighter accompanied by words in Arabic: “Come to Jihad.”
In his letter, Khan is said to have written about an obligation to “migrate” to ISIS-controlled territory. “We are all witness that the Western societies are getting more immoral day by day. I do not want my kids being exposed to filth like this,” the criminal complaint quotes him as having written.
Meanwhile, louisiana’s Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal has called for the extermination of ISIS, saying an approach of mere containment will not do.
“I know the President doesn’t like to use these terms. We are in a war with ISIS. They’ve declared war on us, and whether he wants to call it that or not, that is a fighting conflict. We need to win that. We need to exterminate ISIS,” said Jindal, who is currently weighing his options about a US presidential run in 2016.
“This is not about containing them. It’s not about expelling them. It’s about hunting them down and killing them. Obviously, we’ve got to complete that effort. America must prepare our defence forces not just to be able to win wars but to decisively win wars, to act as a deterrent against future conflict,” Jindal said in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington-based conservative think-tank.