An American Islamic State defector turned FBI informant gave a rare interview Sunday about radicalization and life with ISIS.
With the FBI’s permission, a terrorist from a moderate Muslim family in New York City shared his story with NBC News to deter young Americans from taking the same path. Identified as “Mo,” he described how ISIS’s methods “was just not the Islam I grew up with,” which led him to go home after five months.
Mo’s radicalization started when he watched Dutch film “Submission” in his “Muslims in Diaspora” class at Columbia University. The movie depicts a woman wearing a burqa with the Quran written on her nude body. The video, which he found humiliating as a Muslim, led him to explore what his religion was all about. (RELATED: Experts Think Homegrown Terrorists All Have One Thing In Common)
“I started compromising my American side for my Islamic side,” Mo said.
He soon dropped out of Columbia to become taxi driver and spend his free time doing “research” on Islam. He left for Syria despite warnings from the FBI in June 2014.
“I was planning to not come back and it was a farewell,” Mo said.
But Mo’s jihadi honeymoon soon ended after a series of terrifying events, including a class on how to detonate a suicide vest.
“People were gravitating toward [the suicide vest], touching it like it’s an exhibit, while I was backing away slowly,” Mo said.
The final straw that led him to escape back to America was the sight of “severed heads placed on spiked poles.” When he reached Turkey, he went straight to the U.S. consulate and turned himself in.
His ISIS human resources file was part of 22,000 documents that leaked to international media outlets in March. The file listed his Ivy League education as “clever,” and also revealed he had a plan for how to crash a plane. (RELATED: Leaked Documents Of 22,000 Jihadis Expose ‘Underlying Structures’ Of ISIS)
Mo said the plane crash plot was simply a way of coming across as a person with technical knowledge to avoid the battlefield. The FBI on the other hand is not buying Mo’s story, saying he was very well aware of what he got himself into.
“This is baloney,” FBI agent Ali Soufan told NBC News. “This is a man who went to join ISIS with terrorist intentions on his mind.”
Mo is looking at between 10 and 25 years and prison for pleading guilty of providing material support to a terrorist organization and receiving military training from a terrorist organization. The final sentencing will not take place until after his cooperation with the FBI is complete, and the court may consider a lighter sentence for providing “any substantial assistance.”
More than 250 Americans have joined ISIS.
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