LOUISVILLE, Ky.— According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a guy from southwestern Kentucky was found guilty in federal court Wednesday of going to Syria about ten years ago to train and fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as ISIS.
A federal jury in Bowling Green, Kentucky, found 34-year-old Mirsad Hariz Adem Ramic guilty of several terrorism charges connected to his work with ISIS on Tuesday, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky on Wednesday. Ramic was accused of giving ISIS material backing and getting military-style training from the group.
He could get up to 50 years in prison, a $750,000 fine, and up to life of being closely watched after getting out of jail.
According to court papers and evidence shown in court, Ramic and two other people flew to Turkey in 2014 and then went to Syria to join ISIS. Ramic went to an ISIS training camp after joining the terrorist group. A picture of him on social media showed him standing in front of a truck with an ISIS flag on it.
Then, Ramic, who was born in the United States and Bosnia, joined a fighting group mostly made up of Bosnian foreign fighters and took part in ISIS’s attack in Kobane, Syria, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says that ISIS is an extremist armed group that has planned and carried out terrorist acts around the world, killing and hurting thousands of people. The terrorist group does most of its work in northern and eastern Syria and northern Iraq.
In 2004, the State Department called al-Qa‘ida in Iraq, the group that came before ISIS, a foreign terrorist organization. This label is still in place for ISIS. Many Americans and people from other countries have been linked to the terrorist group for years.
The Extremism Tracker at George Washington University says that since March 2014, when the first arrests linked to the Islamic State happened, 246 people have been charged with crimes in the United States.
Court records show that Ramic and his two accomplices planned to leave the United States and, in June 2014, each went to Istanbul, Turkey on their own. Based on the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the three then “abandoned the rest of their purchased travel itineraries” and flew to Gaziantep, Turkey, which is close to the border between Turkey and Syria.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the three people crossed into Syria from Gaziantep and joined ISIS. At his hearing, evidence showed that Ramic had been to an ISIS training camp and gotten military-style training.
“A photograph of Ramic, posted on social media, depicted him, among other things, wearing camouflage clothing and standing in front of a truck outfitted with an anti-aircraft gun and the ISIS flag,” U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office also said that Ramic kept in touch with his two co-conspirators. The three talked about Ramic’s use of an anti-aircraft gun to shoot at planes, jihad, being a hero, and fighting for ISIS.
Ramic was arrested by the federal government in December 2021 after being sent back to the United States from Turkey. His hearing to be sentenced is set for September.
The Extremism Tracker at The George Washington University says that as of March 2023, people have been arrested in 34 states and the District of Columbia for crimes linked to the Islamic State. In those cases, 203 people have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty.
The tracker found that people who were arrested and charged were accused of being informants or undercover agents, planning terrorist attacks in the United States, or traveling or trying to journey abroad to join the Islamic State.
“ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented,” says a 2015 report on ISIS from The George Washington University. “It has not been as large as in many other Western countries.”
A lot of people have also been arrested and charged for crimes connected to ISIS in 2024.
The Justice Department says that in May, a man from Southern California was arrested after he reportedly made “swatting calls” threatening to shoot up schools in the Inland Empire, California, and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. He also said he would bomb Nashville International Airport for ISIS.
A guy from Detroit was charged in the same month with trying to give money and money-related items to ISIS in 2023, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.
In the beginning of this year, an 18-year-old student from Idaho was caught planning to attack more than 21 churches for ISIS. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, a 34-year-old man from Texas was given a 10-year prison sentence followed by life in prison with electronic monitoring after admitting that he went from Turkey to Syria illegally to get religious and military training.
In the end, he gave up his American identity and said he was a citizen of the Islamic State.
Source: USA Today
