A Minneapolis man who allegedly expressed admiration for the truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people has been accused of trying to join the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 22, made his first court appearance on a charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was ordered held without bail until a detention hearing March 5.
The chief federal defender for Minnesota, Katherian Roe, said her office will represent him but declined to comment on the case.
The criminal complaint against Hassan, a naturalized U.S. citizen, alleges that he tried twice in December to travel from Minnesota to Somalia to join the group but did not succeed. It says he claimed he was going to visit family but had none there.
Prosecutors said the FBI’s investigation established that Hassan expressed public support for the group in multiple posts on social media and also praised Shamsud-Din Jabbar on TikTok over the New Orleans attack.
Investigators say Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and U.S. Army veteran, posted videos professing allegiance to the Islamic State group and an intent to harm others before he plowed a pickup through a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street on Jan. 1. Police fatally shot him during an exchange of gunfire at the scene.
Hassan also allegedly posted a video last week, of himself driving while holding an Islamic State group flag inside his vehicle. The FBI said it also observed him driving with the flag Wednesday. He was arrested on Thursday.
The charging documents also say police in New York notified the FBI last May that Hassan had made social media posts in support of the Somali group al-Shabab. An affidavit from an agent says investigators spotted al-Shabab and Islamic State group propaganda videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts. It also alleges that he exchanged messages with a Facebook account that encourages Somali-speaking individuals to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State group.
FBI agents were watching when Hassan went to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Dec. 13, authorities say. He allegedly tried to check in for a flight to Somalia but left after an airline employee told him he lacked required travel documents.
He allegedly tried again Dec. 29. Agents saw him board a flight to Chicago, where Customs and Border Protection officers interviewed him extensively before his scheduled flight to Ethiopia but did not detain him. He missed the flight and returned to Minneapolis, the affidavit says.
Hassan is the latest of several Minnesotans suspected of leaving or trying to leave the U.S. to join the Islamic State group in recent years, along with thousands of fighters from other countries. In 2016 nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges of conspiring to join the group, and a Minnesotan who actually fought for the group in Iraq was sentenced last June to 10 years in prison.
