A 22-year-old man from Minneapolis, Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, has been charged with attempting to join the Islamic State group after allegedly showing admiration for a truck attack in New Orleans that resulted in 14 deaths, federal prosecutors announced on Friday.
Hassan made his first court appearance facing charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was ordered to remain in custody without bail until his detention hearing on March 5.
Katherian Roe, the chief federal defender for Minnesota, confirmed her office will represent Hassan but declined to comment further on the case.
According to the criminal complaint, Hassan, a naturalized U.S. citizen, attempted twice in December to travel from Minnesota to Somalia to join the terrorist group, although he was unsuccessful. The complaint states he claimed he was going to visit family, despite not having any relatives there.
Prosecutors revealed that the FBI’s investigation found Hassan had publicly expressed support for the Islamic State through several social media posts. He also praised Shamsud-Din Jabbar on TikTok for the New Orleans attack.
Investigators report that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and U.S. Army veteran, shared videos declaring his loyalty to the Islamic State group and expressing an intention to harm others. On January 1, he drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street. Police fatally shot him after an exchange of gunfire at the scene.
Hassan is also said to have posted a video last week showing himself driving while holding an Islamic State flag inside his vehicle. The FBI reported that they observed him driving with the flag again on Wednesday. He was arrested on Thursday.
The charging documents reveal that police in New York alerted the FBI last May about Hassan’s social media posts supporting the Somali group al-Shabab. An affidavit from an FBI agent indicates that investigators found al-Shabab and Islamic State propaganda videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts. The documents also claim he exchanged messages with a Facebook account promoting travel and fighting for the Islamic State, specifically targeting Somali-speaking individuals.
Authorities say FBI agents were observing when Hassan went to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on December 13. He allegedly attempted to check in for a flight to Somalia but left after an airline employee informed him that he lacked the necessary travel documents.
He reportedly tried again on December 29. Agents saw him board a flight to Chicago, where Customs and Border Protection officers conducted an extensive interview before his scheduled flight to Ethiopia. However, they did not detain him, and he missed the flight, returning to Minneapolis instead, according to the affidavit.
Hassan is the latest in a series of Minnesotans suspected of attempting to leave the U.S. to join the Islamic State group in recent years, alongside thousands of fighters from other countries. In 2016, nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges for conspiring to join the group, and a Minnesota man who fought for the group in Iraq was sentenced last June to 10 years in prison.