Man In ISIS Terror Plot Seduced By FBI Agent, Attorney Claims

DEARBORN HEIGHTS, MI – A 21-year-old Dearborn Heights man made braggadocious statements about his alleged plot for an ISIS attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church after falling under the spell of an undercover FBI agent posing as a 19-year-old Iraqi-American Sunni Muslim 19-year-old, his attorney argued in court Tuesday.

Khalil Abu-Rayyan was “lying and boasting” to impress the woman he loved and wanted to marry, his attorney, Todd Shanker, said of the FBI employee who went by the name of Jannah.

Shanker accused the FBI of trying “to radicalize him,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

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Shanker’s remarks came at a detention hearing for Abu-Rayyan, who is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court on a 10-year firearms felony. He has not been charged with terrorism-related offenses.

Abu-Rayyan was arrested on marijuana and the firearms offense last fall, but the FBI had been monitoring his social media accounts for months after finding retweets of ISIS propaganda. The graphic videos showed a Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive, the beheadings of Christians in Egypt and men being thrown from high-rise buildings as a means of execution, according to court documents.

In court, Shanker painted a picture of a naive, moonstruck young man who had never been in love before and wanted to impress his first girlfriend.

“He’s never had a girlfriend,” Shanker said. “He’s never been touched. … He’s clueless.”

Shanker said the undercover agent called Abu-Rayyan a “fraud” after he said he didn’t “want to hurt anyone,” and threatened suicide when he tried to end their online relationship.

“He was truly manipulated,” Shanker said.

Abu-Rayyan is a U.S.-born citizen who reportedly grew up in an anti-ISIS household of peace-loving Muslims. He lived his entire life in the Dearborn Heights area, played football and basketball in high school, and took a year and a half of classes at Henry Ford College.

U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen declined to release Abu-Rayyan into the custody of his father, citing testimony from Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet, who read a text message Abu-Rayyan allegedly sent to the undercover agent:

“Shaytan,” he wrote, using the Arabic word for Satan, “is talking to me. He’s taking over my brain. He whispers to me,”

According to Waterstreet, who introduced the text messages to support a motion for a competency exam that Whalen denied, the person speaking “has a deep voice like me,” claims to be a friend, and wants him to “hurt people ... burn people alive...cut their tongues. …”

Whalen said he was “concerned about the hearing of voices from Satan,” and said that Abu-Rayyan had demonstrated a “real readiness” to carry out his threats against the church. In refusing to release Abu-Rayyan, Whalen noted he doesn’t have a serious criminal history, but pointed out that neither did the suspects in the San Bernardino, CA, terror attacks that killed 14  late last year.