The US Department of Justice reported that a New Jersey citizen named Karim Nasr was arrested in Kenya on the grounds of his attempt to support the Somali Mujahideen Al-Shabaab movement in carrying out acts of violence after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on the seventh of last October.
According to the Ministry of Justice statement yesterday, Friday, Karim Nasr, a 23-year-old American citizen, had moved from New Jersey to Egypt around July before his arrest in Nairobi on December 14, and was transferred to the United States on Thursday. the past.
The young man was charged with “attempting to provide material support to a foreign organization classified as a terrorist organization,” and the penalty for this charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison, according to the announcement issued by prosecutors.
In 2008, the United States designated Al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization. The movement arose from an alliance of Islamist rebels who fought Somalia’s intermediate government and seized large swaths of territory in the early 2000s.
US Attorney General Damian Williams stated, “Karim Nasr, motivated by the heinous terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, decided to devote himself to violent jihad against the United States and its allies.”
Reuters says that the arrest comes in light of the escalation of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia incidents after the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which led to an increase in the levels of the terrorist threat in the United States.
Prosecutors said that Nasr, known as the Strange Immigrant, traveled from Egypt to Kenya with the intention of “joining Al-Shabaab and receiving training with it.” They noted that in communicating with a confidential FBI source and via online postings, Nasr confirmed that he had been thinking about “engaging in jihad for a long time, and that the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel was the particular catalyst that prompted him to become a jihadist.”
For its part, the Department of Justice confirmed its monitoring of the growing threats against the Jewish and Muslim communities in the United States, as a result of escalating manifestations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia linked to tensions in the Middle East.
Nasr was scheduled to appear on Friday before a federal judge in Manhattan for trial.
