By Nigel Boys
After being watched by the FBI since May 2015, for allegedly reposting, linking and commenting on threats or incidents by the barbaric terrorist group ISIS, 21-year-old Kahalil Abu-Rayyan, of Dearborn Heights, Michigan was taken into custody this week.
The criminal complaint against Abu-Rayyan accuses him of planning to attack a Detroit church and mistakenly disclosing his plans to an undercover FBI agent, according to Christian News.net.
The would-be Michigan terrorist came to the attention of the government agency after re-Tweeting or sharing comments and videos on ISIS-related posts. He allegedly re-posted their burning alive of a Jordanian pilot, the beheading of Egyptian Copts and men being thrown to their death from high-rise buildings.
“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan boasted on social media, unknowing that he was actually in contact with an undercover FBI agent as he expressed his support for ISIS. “I don’t know the name of it but it’s close to my job. One of the biggest ones in Detroit,” the man who claimed he wanted to become a martyr, wrote in December.
“I had it planned out. I brought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with [my gun]. I practiced reloading and unloading,” Abu-Rayyan continued. He added that he couldn’t carry out his planned attack because during a search of his car one day, his father had found everything he was going to use, including the bullets and mask he was going to wear.
Abu-Rayyan told the investigator that his only regret was that he was unable to follow through with his planned attack on the church, because it was an easy target where many people went, according to the criminal complaint. He added that had he been successful, his attack would have made everyone pay attention, because it would have been vastly covered in the media.
“Honestly, I regret not doing it,” Abu-Rayyan told the investigator. “If I can’t go do jihad in the Middle East, I would do a jihad over here,” he added.
The FBI said that Abu-Rayyan’s intended terrorist target had been a house of worship with a membership of around 6,000, which was located less than half a mile from his place of employment. However, they would not, as of yet, release the name of the church.
Speaking of the police officer who arrested him in October on drug charges, who had later suffered a heart attack and was receiving treatment in hospital, Abu-Rayyan told the undercover FBI agent that he wanted to kill the man. He added that he wouldn’t mind being martyred at the hospital where the officer was recovering.
Abu-Rayyan also said that when he hears about shooting and death he becomes excited and he would “gladly behead people if I needed to,” the complaint further states. “It is my dream to behead someone…,” he wrote when in contact with the investigator.
The Guardian reported that Abu-Rayyan appeared in U.S. district court in Detroit on Thursday and remains jailed pending a hearing on Monday. Although he faces marijuana and gun charges, he has yet to be charged with terrorism-related crimes.
The details of the alleged plot come the same week Twitter announce that they had shut down over 125,000 accounts, which were related to violent extremism, NBC News reported.
“If the allegations are true, then they’re extremely troublesome,” Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Detroit News. He added that CAIR is urging caution “and encouraging the broader community to also reserve judgment regarding this matter.”
“We advise people not to jump to conclusions about what happened and wait for all of the facts to come in,” said Muzammil Ahmed, board chairman of the Michigan Muslim Community Council. “Our thoughts are with our Christian friends and congregation that were threatened. We think that isolated acts like this, if they are indeed true, are an anomaly in this area.”
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