North Carolina Man Faces Charges After Trying To Join Al Qaeda
Pakistani native Basit Javed Sheikh, 29, of Cary, NC, is charged with trying to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
He was arrested on Nov. 2 before boarding the first of a series of flights that would take him to Lebanon.
Sheikh told an FBI informant he was going to join the group called the Nusrah Front in Syria, an FBI agent said in a sworn affidavit obtained by The Associated Press…
In August, Sheikh began an online relationship with an FBI undercover employee on a Facebook page promoting Islamic extremism, the affidavit said.
Sheikh told the covert informant in early September that he’d bought a one-way ticket to travel to Turkey in hopes of making contact with people who would get him to Syria. Sheikh said he backed out because “he could not muster the strength to leave his parents,” the affidavit said. Sheikh said he had traveled to Turkey last year hoping to join the fight in Syria, but became dispirited by his experience with people who claimed to be part of the US-backed Free Syrian Army.
