Hamza Naj Ahmed knew that ISIL was a terror organization, he told a judge in federal court Monday, but its slick social media messaging convinced him its cause was a righteous one.
Watching online videos, he came to believe that ISIL was "helping the innocent people, similar to government organizations," Ahmed said as he entered a guilty plea to charges that he conspired to go join the Islamist group.
With just two weeks left before the start of a major federal terrorism trial, Ahmed became the sixth defendant to plead guilty in the yearlong investigation into recruitment of young Somali-Americans. His appearance marked the second late plea deal this month made possible by the revelation that a local imam and legal adviser may have interfered with his and others' cases.
Given a new a chance to avoid the May 9 trial, Ahmed told U.S. District Judge Michael Davis that stories of women and children suffering under the Syrian regime captured his attention even as he watched videos of mass executions of prisoners produced by the same group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
"I would say the [social] media was a very critical aspect of it," he said.
The plea by Ahmed, 21, came 11 days after another defendant, Adnan Farah, took a similar deal after prosecutors said they had new evidence of interference with the men's cases as they considered previous plea offers last year.
Though prosecutors didn't name who allegedly interfered with Farah, another attorney disclosed last month that Hassan Mohamud — a St. Paul imam who helped advise the defense team of Farah's brother — tried to dissuade his client from pleading guilty on the eve of a September hearing. The attorney also disclosed that his client, Zacharia Abdurahman, had agreed with co-defendants Farah and Ahmed that accepting plea deals was the best choice.
That new evidence has led the government to take the rare step of dropping charges of conspiracy to murder abroad against Ahmed and Farah added in a new indictment in October.
