Long Prison Sentence For Support To ISIS in Northern Virginia

ALEXANDRIA, VA — A former Army National Guard member convicted of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State (ISIS) was sentenced Friday to 11 years in prison, according the Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 27, of Sterling, pleaded guilty in October after being caught in an FBI sting operation. He had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the Department of Justice, in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL (or ISIS) brokered an introduction between Jalloh and an individual in the U.S. who was actually an FBI informant. The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the U.S. and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS.

Jalloh met with the FBI informant on two occasions and told the informant he was a former member of the Virginia Army National Guard, but that he decided not to re-enlist after listening to online lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, a deceased leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Jalloh had recently taken a six-month trip to Africa where he had met with ISIL members in Nigeria and first began communicating online with the ISIL member who later brokered his introduction to the informant. During their meeting, Jalloh also told the informant he thought about conducting an attack all the time, and that he was close to doing so at one point.

Jalloh claimed to know how to shoot guns and praised the gunman who killed five U.S. military members in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015. Jalloh also stated he had been thinking about conducting an attack similar to the attack at Ft. Hood, Texas, in November 2009, which killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.

According to the statement of facts filed with the plea agreement, during the May 2016 meeting, Jalloh asked the informant about the timeline for an operation and commented that it was better to plan an attack operation for the month of Ramadan, and stated that such operations are, “100 percent the right thing.” Jalloh also asked if the informant could assist him in providing a donation to ISIL. Ultimately, Jalloh provided a prepaid cash transfer of $500 to a contact of the informant that Jalloh believed was a member of ISIL, but who was in fact an undercover FBI employee.

In June 2016, Jalloh traveled to North Carolina and made multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain firearms. On July 2, Jalloh went to a gun dealership in Northern Virginia, where he test-fired and purchased an assault rifle. The rifle was however rendered inoperable before he left the dealership with the weapon.

Jalloh was arrested the following day and the FBI seized the rifle.

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