Attorney: Alleged ISIS Sympathizer Deserves Bond

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DEARBORN HEIGHTS, MI – The attorney for a Dearborn Heights man suspected of supporting ISIS poses a “very low” threat of danger and should be released from custody, his attorney argued in a motion filed this week in U.S. District Court.

The assessment that Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, isn’t a danger was included in a psychological report from Dr. Lyle Danuloff that was filed with attorney Todd Shanker’s motion.

Shanker, an attorney with the Federal Defender Office in Detroit, argued that the report “supports reconsideration and reversal of the order denying Rayyan release pending trial,” The Detroit News reports.

Rayyan, who has been under federal surveillance since last May, was taken into custody in February after he allegedly plotted an ISIS-inspired attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church.

See Also

• FBI: Dearborn Heights Man Planned ISIS-Inspired Attack
• Accused in Terror Threat, Dearborn Heights Man Appears in Court
• Dad Seeks Custody of Son in ISIS Terror Threat
• Man In ISIS Terror Plot Seduced By FBI Agent: Attorney

He hasn’t been charged with any terrorism-related charges, and is awaiting a June 21 trial in U.S. District Court on two 10-year firearms felony charges.

Shanker wrote in his motion that “it was assumed that the government would get an indictment that included a charge of attempted material support of terrorism.”

Danuloff, who evaluated Rayyan in March, said in his reporter there is “no evidence of anti-social or violent proclivity either currently or in history.” Shanker has contended all along that the statements were braggadocious meant to impress an undercover FBI agent posing as a Sunni Muslim 19-year-old, and Danuloff’s evaluation supports that, he said.

Danuloff characterized Rayyan’s behavior with the informant as “the result of deep longings for female attention in a very shy and awkward young man.”

“His verbalization was the result of an effort to keep the attention with hopes of a future,” Danuloff concluded. “They were not the result of radicalization or representative of terrorist intentions.”

Shanker accused the FBI of using “extraordinary tactics” to manipulate Rayyan.

In Twitter exchanges, included in exhibits filed with the motion, the informant claimed to be “depressed, suicidal and prepared to engage in a martyrdom operation,” Shanker wrote in his motion.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has turned over only a portion of the Twitter exchanges between the pair, but they remain largely undisclosed, Shanker argued.

“And with extraordinary audacity, the government has essentially asked defense counsel to conduct his client’s defense in secret, with all filings under seal, as a quid pro quo for the release of unredacted discovery,” he wrote.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan Council of American Islamic Relations, told WJBK-TV he believes Rayyan was “entrapped by an FBI informant in regards to a case that had nothing to do with terrorism or national security.”