[NPASyria] The US authorities have sentenced a 26-year-old man from Florida to 18 years in prison "for attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," The US Department of Justice said on Thursday.The man, named Muhammad Momtaz al-Azhari, was convicted for attempting to provide material support, including money, assets, and weapons, to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely ISIS, the judge said.
Al-Azhari will be in prison for the next 18 years, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, the US State Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a release.
"In or around April 2020, al-Azhari began to plan to carry out an attack in support of ISIS. Around the same time, al-Azhari began to acquire multiple firearms. al-Azhari also researched and scouted potential locations for an attack in the Tampa Bay area. Since at least May 2019, al-Azhari also consumed ISIS propaganda and spoke favorably about ISIS, to which he eventually pledged his allegiance through a bay’ah (an Islamic oath of allegiance)" the release read.
The release added that al-Azhari pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2023. Although he is a United States citizen, he spent most of his life abroad and came to embrace dogmatic, Islamist/Salafist beliefs. "In 2018, al-Azhari was released from prison in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
following a conviction and sentence for supporting terrorism in Syria, after which he was removed to the United States."
In 2019, he returned to Tampa and less than a year later, in April 2020, he began trying to buy guns illegally on eBay, federal Sherlocks said. During this time, the FBI was monitoring him, officials said.
Court documents described al-Azhari as an ISIS supporter who "consumed ISIS propaganda and spoke favorably" about the terrorist group.
In May 2020, when Al-Azhari was arrested, federal investigators said he was in the process of secretly buying high-powered guns and silencers and was also researching IEDs, suicide vests and explosive poisons. All of this was part of his plan to support ISIS, the release said.
Investigators said at the time he scoped out potential targets like Honeymoon Island and the FBI's Tampa Field Office, but also researched Clearwater Beach, Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa and the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.
According to law enforcement, he even rehearsed parts of the planned attack.
At one point in 2020, Al-Azhari reportedly expressed "admiration" for the Pulse nightclub shooter and said he wanted to carry out a similar mass shooting.
In January 2022, a federal judge ruled Al-Azhari was incompetent to stand trial.
He apparently suffered from untreated schizophrenia with hallucinations, and spent months in a federal facility being treated before his trial.
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