A US Air Force veteran allegedly sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and who became a Muslim has been charged for trying to join Islamic State (IS) extremists in Syria, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Tairod Pugh, 47, who had spent the last 18 months living in the Middle East and has an Egyptian wife, allegedly tried to travel to Syria in January, weeks after being sacked as an airplane mechanic.
It is the fourth arrest announced by Loretta Lynch, a US Attorney General nominee and the current US attorney for the eastern district of New York, over recent plots to join Islamic State extremists fighting in Syria.
Pugh was indicted with attempting to support a foreign terrorist organization for nine months from May last year to January, and with obstruction of justice over the tampering of electronic evidence.
He faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted and was yesterday scheduled to appear before federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn.
Court papers show he cropped up on the US FBI’s radar as early as 2001 as an American Airlines employee purportedly sympathetic to the al-Qaeda mastermind responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Prosecution documents say 180 Muslim extremist videos were found on his laptop, including one showing Islamic State killers shooting a group of prisoners in the head one by one.
It also allegedly contained information on crossing points into Syria and a letter to his wife calling himself a mujahid — or holy warrior — who faced either victory or martyrdom.
US intelligence officials say more than 20,000 volunteers from around the world, including more than 150 US citizens, have gone to Syria to link up with extremists.
Pugh served in the US Air Force from 1986 to 1990 as an instrument specialist and was trained in aircraft engine, navigation and weapons systems maintenance.
In 1998, he moved to Texas, converted to Islam and “became increasingly radical in his beliefs,” according to the complaint.
By 2001 — the year that al-Qaeda hijacked US passenger jets — he was working as a mechanic for American Airlines.
That year, the FBI received a tip from a coworker alleging that Pugh was sympathetic to bin Laden and that he claimed the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in east Africa, which killed 224 people, were justified.
In 2002, “an associate” subsequently told the FBI that Pugh had wanted to travel to Chechnya to fight.
Court papers next put him in Iraq, where he worked for about six months in 2009 and 2010 on aircraft avionics for DynCorp, a private contractor to the US military.
From New Jersey, for the last year and a half before his arrest, he is believed to have been living in Egypt, Dubai and Jordan.
“Born and raised in the United States, Pugh allegedly turned his back on his country and attempted to travel to Syria in order to join a terrorist organization,” Lynch said.
“We will continue to vigorously prosecute extremists, whether based here or abroad, to stop them before they are able to threaten the United States and its allies,” Lynch said.
Prosecutors say Pugh was stopped by Turkish guards at an Istanbul airport after flying in from Egypt on Jan. 10, when he allegedly said he was a US Special Forces pilot on vacation.
Suspicious, they sent him back to Cairo, where he was detained, his laptop found damaged and inoperable, his iPod wiped clean of data and USB thumb drives also intentionally damaged.
He allegedly told Egyptian authorities that he would rather be deported anywhere in the Middle East, because “the US doesn’t like black Muslims” and when asked how he would pay for his flight home, said he would prefer to remain in Egyptian custody.
He was arrested on Jan. 16 in the US and indicted by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on Monday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of