Man Allegedly Funded Brooklyn Residents' Trips To Syria To Join ISIS, Pleads Guilty

A 36-year-old Uzbekistan-born Illinois man funded Brooklyn residents' trips to Syria to join the al-Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and now, he has pleaded guilty.

The Justice Department said that Dilshod Khusanov faces a maximum penalty of 11 years in jail, and according to his plea agreement, he agreed to be removed from America after completing his sentence.

The guilty plea was announced Monday by Dermot F. Shea, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD); Mark J. Lesko, acting assistant attorney for the Justice Department’s National Security Division; Michael J. Driscoll, agent in charge for the FBI’s New York Field Office; and Breon Peace, United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

According to court documents, he encouraged people to travel to wage violent jihad or holy war between 2014 and 2015, reported Fox News.

About seven years ago, Khusanov was one of the people who helped fund for two Brooklyn residents, Akhror Saidakhmetov and Abdurasul Juraboev, so that they could travel to Syria and fight for ISIS. Before Saidakhmetov’s scheduled departure, Khusanov also arranged for money to be deposited into the bank account of Akmal Zakirov, one of his co-conspirators.

In February 2015, Saidakhmetov was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport while taking a flight going to Istanbul, Turkey which is a common pitstop for international fighters on their way to Syria to join ISIS. Khusanov is the last among his co-conspirators to be convicted while the others have either been sentenced or are waiting to be sentenced.

Shea said in a statement that money is the "oxygen that feeds the flame of any organized terrorist activity," and this case makes it clear that whether someone is a terrorist bomber, a planner, or helping in raising money to pay for their travel, that person will be a target of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Driscoll said that Khusanov’s guilty plea is the final step toward wrapping up the case in which the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force worked tirelessly to keep Americans safe from potential terrorist acts, according to Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Thomas Osadzinski, a 22-year-old ex-Chicago college student who designed a computer code to help ISIS bypass programs designed to block the group’s propaganda, was Monday convicted of trying to provide material support to the group.