Hamden Man Sentenced For Trying To Travel To Fight For ISIS: Feds

HAMDEN, CT — A Hamden man has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison in connection with trying to travel to fight for ISIS in 2019, according to officials.

Kevin Iman McCormick, 30, was also sentenced Thursday to a lifetime term of supervised release with monitoring of his electronic devices following the prison sentence for trying to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut Vanessa Roberts Avery announced.

Authorities said McCormick made several statements between August and October 2019 to others “expressing a desire to travel to Syria and to fight for ISIS,” according to a news release.

“In August 2019, McCormick stated to members of a Muslim community center that ‘we should support ISIS’ and ‘jihad is the way to go,’” officials wrote in the news release. “In another conversation in October 2019, McCormick stated ‘I gotta fight bro, because those people, Abu Masa and ISIL, they fought for me bro, I know it, I can feel it, in my heart. So it’s my time to fight… It just is what it is bro, it’s just my – it’s just my time to go bro.’ When McCormick was asked to elaborate on where he would like to travel, McCormick responded, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know bro – it’s gotta be like Syria. Where ISIL is at….whichever place is easiest, whatever place I can get there the fastest, the quickest, the easiest, and where I can have a rifle and I can have some people bro. That’s what I need, I need a rifle and I need some people, I need Islamic law, I need, that’s what I need, because if I have these things, it’s gonna to be very hard to kill me.’”

McCormick tried to board a flight from Connecticut to Jamaica on Oct. 12, 2019, but was prevented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

McCormick subsequently told someone that he wanted to travel to Jamaica, and then onward to Syria to join ISIS, according to officials. He also indicated that he wanted to acquire weapons, officials said.

“On October 19, 2019, McCormick made a video during which he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi,” the news release states. “Also on that date, he purchased a plane ticket from Toronto, Canada, to Amman, Jordan. On October 21, 2019, McCormick was arrested after he traveled to a small private airport in Connecticut where he expected to board a plane that would fly him to Canada.”

McCormick has been detained since his arrest. He pleaded guilty in January to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.