The Islamic State directed Ohio man Munir Abdulkader to kill a U.S. service-member and attack a police station, court documents from his sentencing obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.
“Abdulkader was specifically tasked by Hussein and ISIL with killing an individual in the United States,” Court Documents provided to TheDCNF from the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University reveal. Abdulkader’s director Junaid Hussian a British teenager was reportedly killed by a U.S. drone strike outside of ISIS’s capital city of Raqqa.
Abdulkader was reportedly an Eritrean immigrant to the U.S. and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2006. University records show he was once enrolled at Xavier University, and the University of Cincinnati.
Abdulkader pled guilty July 7 to “to attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States, providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence”
“The Defendant placed himself under the direction and control of a pernicious foreign terrorist organization and plotted with that organization to conduct multiple murderous attacks in the Cincinnati area,” the sentencing memorandum says confirming the explicit foreign control of the operation.
The revelation may be the first revelation of an ISIS enabled attack on U.S. soil, Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University Seamus Hughes told TheDCNF. Hughes elaborated that Hussian’s involvement in the May 2015 attack in Garland, Texas, is still unclear. If Hussian was involved in the Garland plot, that would make it the first ISIS directed attack.
Abdulkader was reportedly advised by Hussain that travel to Syria was too risky, and that he should “consider a violent attack within the United States” instead. Abdulkader instead focused on a plot to “murder a government employee simply because that employee proudly served the United States of America. Furthermore, Abdulkader planned to attack a police station in the Cincinnati area, using both explosives and firearms, in order to kill as many police officers as possible.”
The documents reveal that Hussian directed the specific actions Abdulkader took, down to minute details. He provided the address and personal information of the U.S. soldier to Abdulkader and laid out a plan.
“Hussain’s plan was for them to raid a soldier’s home, behead him, record it, send the recording to Hussain. Once this attack was completed, the Defendant was to go to a police station, throw pipe bombs, engage the police officers with firearms, and then fight to the death.”
Abdulkader came under FBI surveillance after repeatedly praising ISIS on Twitter throughout 2015.
“In preparation for the attacks, Abdulkader conducted surveillance of the police station, received a targeting package about the victim, went to a shooting range, learned how to operate certain firearms, and practiced shooting the firearms. He also bought an AK-47 assault rifle for the attack.”
Upon buying the weapon in a parking lot, the FBI swooped in to arrest him in May 2015.
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