(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Justice Department announced charges on Friday against a U.S.-Albanian dual citizen who was allegedly plotting to support the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as ISIS.
The defendant, Erald Alimehmeti, 33, of Tirana, Albania, was arrested Thursday for allegedly attempting to provide material support to ISIS, and for distributing instructional information regarding the making of explosives.
However, the DOJ alleged that Alimehmeti committed those crimes in 2019 and 2020, before he was arrested in Albania for weapons and assault offenses. The FBI arrested him for the five-year-old crimes when he returned to the country, after serving two years in prison in Albania.
According to the DOJ, Alimehmeti began recruiting for ISIS in 2019, when he finished an initial sting in Albanian prison that he served from 2015 to 2019. Around that time, he allegedly asked an FBI informant online for help with “something im not able to do in Albania”—requesting the informant to purchase “a plate carrier,” “magazine pouches,” as and “rifle modifications such as polymer buttstocks handguards optics.”
Alimehmeti continued talking with the FBI informant throughout 2019, and he was eventually contacted by an undercover FBI agent online in January 2020. Alimehmeti eventually invited the FBI agent into “a tactical channel providing training for brothers and sisters”—what the bureau alleged to be an online group for ISIS supporters.
Also in January 2020, the initial FBI informant introduced the defendant to two other informants who were posing as ISIS supporters.
“ALIMEHMETI asked the [FBI informants] about their military experience and skills and referenced the ‘op,’ for which he sought their participation, writing, among other things, ‘Do you know sniping akhi? The formulas and ballistics?’” the government’s criminal complaint said.
Alimehmeti was arrested in Albania again in November 2020, as he was in touch with the FBI informants. Albanian authorities provided the FBI with a forensic image of his laptop, the criminal complaint said.
There are no allegations that Alimehmeti committed any crimes from the time he was released from Albanian prison in 2020 to when he was arrested last week.
Nevertheless, law enforcement still touted the arrest as a major win for national security.
“As we continue to see, allegedly attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization usually has just one outcome: Arrest. I commend the NYPD and all the members of the FBI’s New York JTTF, for their unwavering focus on keeping New York City and our nation safe,” said NYPD Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner, who department participated in the terrorism sting.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
