South Carolina: Muslim on Parole for Jihad Plot, Arrested Again Trying to Join ISIS

Zakaryia Abdin, 18

Source: South Carolina Man Arrested for Attempting to Join ISIS | OPA | Department of Justice

Zakaryia Abdin, 18, of Ladson, South Carolina, appeared in federal court this morning in Charleston, South Carolina, following his arrest by the FBI last night. Abdin was arrested for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charge is based on Abdin’s alleged attempt to travel overseas to join the terrorist organization. Special Agents of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) took Abdin into custody at the Charleston International Airport before he boarded an outbound flight.

More details via Paroled York County, SC, teen who tried to join ISIS arrested by FBI

Police warned a juvenile parole board that a teen from York who was convicted of trying to join ISIS was a threat.

The teen wanted to kill police, American soldiers and anyone else who got in his way, court and parole board testimony showed. But the parole board released the teen last year before Zakaryia Abdin Abdin had to be lawfully released at age 21.

Late Thursday, the FBI arrested Abdin, now 18, at the Charleston airport on federal terrorism charges of trying to help and join ISIS.

York County’s top law enforcement officers and York’s top officials are outraged. They say they tried to warn state officials.

York Police Chief Andy Robinson and 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett confirmed to The Herald that Abdin is the same person charged and convicted in York as a juvenile.

Abdin and another unnamed extremist were stopped before a 2015 plot was executed to rob a gun store in North Carolina, then attack troops at military bases near Raleigh.

Robinson said he is livid that Abdin was out of jail. “We tried to protect the people of this community, this state and America by arresting him and asking that he be kept in jail after he was convicted,” Robinson said Friday.

“We did the best we could,” Robinson said. “But the parole board let him out. It is aggravating that now the federal government can prosecute him because he is 18, when they couldn’t when he was a juvenile. He was just as much a threat then as he is now, and this shows it.”

“All I can say is, I am happy they got him before he hurt or killed somebody. Or a lot of people,” Robinson said.

Robinson and other officers from the York Police Department and York County Sheriff’s Office appeared twice before the S.C. Juvenile Parole Board in 2016. They pleaded with the board not to release Abdin from jail before age 21, when his sentence would end.

“The parole board was deaf to public safety, when our officers told the board that this person was a threat to the United States of America,” said York Mayor Eddie Lee.

Federal prosecutors did not charge Abdin when he was arrested in York at 16. South Carolina has no terrorism laws, so Abdin could only be charged with illegal gun possession.

Abdin, a former York Comprehensive High School student, was arrested in York in February 2015 with a gun, an ISIS flag, electronic material that linked him to ISIS abroad and to another alleged Islamic extremist. He also had a floor plan of the gun store where authorities say a robbery was planned.

Abdin, of Syrian heritage, was convicted in York County Family Court in 2015, then paroled in 2016. Because he was a juvenile, his name was never publicly released.

The Herald, which covered his conviction and parole hearings, did not name Abdin at the time because he was prosecuted as a juvenile.

Federal prosecutors released his name Friday, saying Abdin, now an adult, was again trying to join and help ISIS. Federal authorities declined to say that Abdin was the same person convicted in York.

Brackett, the 16th Circuit solicitor, said evidence against Abdin in the York case was “very troubling and disturbing.”

Abdin told the juvenile parole board in two hearings and a judge when he pleaded guilty to weapon possession that he was a changed person, and that he never plotted to join ISIS, despite evidence in juvenile court and police testimony.

Abdin, who now lives in Ladson near Charleston, told the parole board in May he would be living with family near Charleston and attending technical school.

He was actually denied parole at least once prior to being released: Syrian Muslim teen who plotted jihad on U.S. military base denied parole

“That’s one of the scariest individuals we’ve ever encountered. He’s a terrorist…” ~ York police chief

The watchman on the wall sounding the ALARM