Texas teen converts to Islam, uses social media to recruit for jihad terror group
BY ROBERT SPENCER
JIHADWATCH.ORG
FEB 10, 2019
Still another example of a convert to Islam getting the crazy idea that his new religion required him to commit treason and mass murder. If these were converts to Christianity, it would be all over the New York Times and CNN, but of course that would never happen anyway.
“New York man on way to Pakistan to join LeT arrested at US airport,” Press Trust of India, February 9, 2019:
A 29-year-old New York City man has been arrested while he was about to catch a flight to Pakistan to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), in a dangerous sign that the Pakistan-based terror group, which carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, has expanded its tentacles in the US.
In another instance of growing influence of the LeT in the US and radicalisation of American youths, a teenager in Texas was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the terror group and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training….
In the southern state of Texas, 18-year-old Michael Kyle Sewell was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the LeT and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training.
The arrest of the New Yorker and the charges against the Texas teenager – who do not appear to be of South Asian origin as has been the case in previous such arrests – has set the alarm bells ringing among the law enforcement agencies in the US.
The arrests have thrown the spotlight on issues of homegrown terrorism and radicalisation of American youths, a situation that authorities have dreaded post Mumbai-terrorist attack.
Based out of Pakistan, the LeT is a UN and US designated global terrorist organisation and has carried out several terrorist attacks inside India, including the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008 that took the lives of 166 people including several Americans.
“These organisations are using the internet and social media to appeal to the most barbaric impulses in people, and train them to kill,” Sweeney Jr added….
Meanwhile, Sewell, who encouraged and recruited an individual to join the LeT hails from Fort Worth city and met the man.
“Sewell allegedly used social media to recruit and encourage an individual to travel overseas to join a foreign terrorist organization and conspired with that person to provide material support to that organisation,” Demers said.
According to the criminal complaint, Sewell provided the co-conspirator with contact information of an individual he believed could facilitate the travel to Pakistan.
Unbeknownst to Sewell and his partner, the facilitator was an undercover FBI agent, the federal prosecutors said….
