The three Bolingbrook siblings planned carefully, saving money, making to-do lists and packing sleeping bags and snacks for what was sure to be an arduous journey to a treacherous part of the world.
In their bedrooms, the teens left handwritten letters to their parents, expressing disdain for their suburban American lives and explaining why they felt compelled to join the Islamic State terrorist group. The tone of their writing made clear that there was no turning back.
“My heart is crying with the thought I left you and I probably will never see you again in this (world),” the 17-year-old girl wrote to her mother. “The future is very uncertain. By the time you are reading this we could be captured, or stranded or possibly even killed.”
The letters were made public Monday at a detention hearing for 19-year-old Mohammed Hamzah Khan, who was charged last month with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. A criminal complaint alleged that he planned to meet in Turkey with a contact who would take him to Islamic State locations in Iraq or Syria. He allegedly told agents he expected his position to be “some type of public service, a police force, humanitarian work or a combat role.”
In seeking to have Khan held in custody pending trial, prosecutors revealed for the first time he had persuaded his sister and 16-year-old brother, neither of whom is charged, to join him in the fight.
Prosecutors said the siblings passed through O'Hare International Airport security Oct. 4 and were on their way to the gate to board a flight to Vienna with a connection to Istanbul when customs agents stopped them.
As the teens were being questioned about their trip, FBI agents searched the family's modest home, where they found the letters imploring their parents not to go to the authorities.
There was no evidence the parents knew about the plans — in fact, when agents asked Khan's mother where her youngest son was, she thought he was asleep in his room, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Hiller said.
After a nearly three-hour hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Cox ordered Khan held without bond, saying he posed a risk to flee and could be a danger to the community. The judge said Khan's own writings, in which he allegedly called himself a “lion of war” and declared allegiance to Islamic State, were strong evidence he was prepared to abandon his parents and his country to join the brutal terrorist group.
Khan's lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, scoffed at the government case, calling it “hopelessly weak” and arguing that keeping Khan locked up for what was “very close to a thought crime” wouldn't solve the problem of how groups like Islamic State were gaining traction with American youths. He asked Cox to release Khan to home confinement and said the family would post its home with about $100,000 in equity as collateral.
“These are American children. They are not barbarians,” Durkin said.
In the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after the hearing, Durkin told reporters there was “not one iota of evidence” that Khan planned to do anyone harm. He said that like a lot of teens, Khan may have been swayed by “misinformation” about Islamic State spread in propaganda on the Internet.
“He's a very devout, committed, thoughtful kid who bought into some very slick advertising,” Durkin said.
But Hiller said it was no spur-of-the-moment decision. He showed the judge notebooks seized from Khan's home that allegedly showed Khan had taken a summer job at a retail store to save up $2,600 for the three round-trip tickets to Turkey, arranged for passports for his brother and sister, and emailed U.S. officials when one of the documents was delayed.
There was also evidence in the materials of the siblings' radicalization, Hiller said. In an unsigned letter left in his bedroom, Khan's younger brother expressed disdain for fellow Muslims who do not support waging jihad, calling them “diseased with hypocrisy.”
“The evil of this country makes me sick,” the brother wrote. “They tricked us Muslims and enticed us with an easy life and wealth.”
Meanwhile, Khan's sister had expressed “twisted delight” after viewing an Islamic State propaganda video depicting beheadings, torture and other barbaric acts, Hiller said. A search of her Twitter feed revealed a message about the video this year that was decorated with heart-shaped and smiley-face emoticons, he said.
As Hiller gave his presentation, Khan, who has been in custody since his arrest Oct. 4, dropped his head toward his chest, at times closing his eyes. His parents and uncle sat in the front row of the courtroom gallery and showed no reaction to the allegations.
Prosecutors had sought to close all or part of the detention hearing because of “privacy concerns” involving the two uncharged minors. On Friday, Cox refused the government request, saying prosecutors had not met their burden to show that closing the proceedings would outweigh the “value of openness” in the courts.
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