A second jihadist wannabe from Connecticut was busted this week for trying to travel to the Middle East and fight for ISIS — declaring that “I gotta fight bro,” federal prosecutors said this week.
An affidavit was unsealed Thursday against Kevin Iman McCormick, 26, of Hamden, who was indicted in late October on charges of attempting to provide material support to ISIS, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
McCormick was busted Oct. 21 and charged by federal criminal complaint, prosecutors said. A federal grand jury in New Haven returned an indictment on those charges Oct. 30, according to prosecutors.
In court documents and statements made in court, McCormick made it clear that he was an ISIS devotee who longed to travel and fight for the terrorist group.
“I gotta fight bro, because those people, Abu Masa and ISIL, they fought for me bro, I know it, I can feel it, in my heart,” he said, according to prosecutors. “So it’s my time to fight . . . It just is what it is bro…it’s just my time to go bro.”
When he was asked to elaborate on where he’d like to travel, he said, “I don’t know bro – it’s gotta be like Syria.”
“Where ISIL is at….whichever place is easiest, whichever place I can get there the fastest, the quickest, the easiest, and where I can have a rifle and I can have some people bro,” he added. “That’s what I need, I need a rifle and I need some people, I need Islamic law… that’s what I need, because if I have these things, it’s going to be very hard to kill me.”
Back on Oct. 12, McCormick was stopped by Homeland Security when he attempted to board a flight from Connecticut to Jamaica. From Jamaica, he had intended to travel to Syria to join ISIS, and indicated that he wanted to acquire weapons, prosecutors said.
Six days later, he allegedly made a video pledging allegiance to ISIS and its slain leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US special forces operation in Syria.
That same day, he purchased a plane ticket from Toronto, Canada to Amman, Jordan. Authorities arrested him on Oct. 21 after he traveled to a small private airport in Connecticut where he planned to board the flight to Canada, prosecutors said.
He has been detained since that arrest.
McCormick has also made statements to people at mosques expressing his desire to fight for ISIS and kill people, according to court documents obtained by The Hartford Courant.
One person who spoke to McCormick at a mosque told the FBI that he had cited religious doctrine to justify his desire to fight, but did so incorrectly, the Courant reported, citing the criminal complaint.
At another mosque, McCormick declared that “we should support ISIS” and “Jihad is the way to go,” the Courant reported.
He had also attempted to purchase a gun and knife at a store in Washington State — but acted strangely and told an employee the firearm was “not for an animal,” the paper reported. The store refused to sell him the gun, according to the report.
McCormick’s family told the FBI they believe he suffers from mental health issues, according to the Courant.
On Sunday, Ahmad Khalil Elshazly, 22, another would-be ISIS member from Connecticut, was arrested while making arrangements to travel to Turkey on a cargo ship to join ISIS, according to federal officials.
He allegedly said he wished the US would “burn in fire.”
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