USA v. Ahmed, Mohamed Ibrahim
Beaumont, TX

ISIS

Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed was found guilty by a jury in December 2019 of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (ISIS) and of making false statements to the FBI by "recruiting fellow inmates to join ISIS and training them in preparation for future attacks." He was sentenced to an additional 300 months in October 2020. Ahmed was already serving a 111- month sentence for a 2013 conviction of terrorist violations.

In 2013, Ahmed was convicted in the Southern District of New York of conspiring to provide material support to and receive military-type training from a foreign terrorist organization. Ahmed had attended an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1996 and was a member of the Brandbergen Mosque network, which financially and logistically supported other terrorist groups. He was sentenced to 111 months in federal prison and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) in Beaumont, Texas to serve his sentence. Ahmed continued his terrorist activities while serving his sentence at FCI-Beaumont. He recruited at least five inmates to join ISIS and to conduct terrorist acts in the United States after their release from federal custody, telling them that he was aligned with ISIS and supported al Shabaab and al Qaeda. From prison, he celebrated the Ariana Grande concert bombing and other acts of terror in the news, telling an inmate, "They kill kids, we gonna kill kids." Ahmed wanted the inmates he was recruiting to either travel abroad to join ISIS, or create "sleeper cells" within the United States to carry out attacks. Ahmed provided would-be recruits with a training manual on how to carry out violent jihad, including topics such as "how to carry out guerilla war," "selection of human targets," and "how to carry out assassinations." He even held physical training exercises with other inmates in the prison yard to get them in shape to carry out the acts of terror he was plotting. Ahmed also discussed a plot with fellow inmates to bomb the Federal Detention Center in New York City as a revenge for his prosecution there.