Chicago man convicted of helping Islamic State spread violent message, encourage terrorist attacks

Chicago Tribune

9 hours ago

Nearly seven years after the feds raided his Northwest Side home, a Chicago IT specialist was convicted Friday of helping the Islamic State terrorist group through a media campaign that encouraged attacks, celebrated beheadings and other gruesome violence and taunted Western culture with memes like a headless Santa delivering a bomb.
U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey issued his verdict following a rare bench trial that began last month, convicting Ashraf al Safoo on 11 counts, including providing material support to a terrorist organization, conspiracy to transmit threats in interstate commerce, and computer fraud.
Al Safoo faces up to 130 years behind bars when he's sentenced on Oct. 9.
In his brief ruling from the bench, Blakey called the evidence at trial 'overwhelming.' The judge did, however, acquit al Safoo on a lone count involving $400 he'd wired to an Islamic State member in 2018, ruling that the evidence was insufficient that al Safoo knew of the recipient's status in the organization, also known as ISIS.
Dressed in orange jail clothes, al Safoo, 41, kept his hands clasped behind him and did not react as the judge announced his ruling. Blakey said he will issue a more lengthy written opinion explaining his verdicts at a later date.
After the hearing, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros released a statement saying the case was 'a testament to the vigilance and dedication of our prosecutors and law enforcement partners who stand watch to disrupt and prevent dangerous threats before they materialize.'
'We will vigorously pursue and bring to justice those who provide material support — in whatever form — to terrorist organizations,' Boutros said.
Al Safoo's attorney could not immediately be reached.
Blakey's verdict turns the page in a long-running case beset by numerous delays as al Safoo changed legal teams and challenged some of the key evidence against him, including the testimony of convicted ISIS member Yasir al Anzi, who was captured in 2019 by U.S. forces in Iraq and is serving a sentence there of 20 years to life.
At the time al Safoo was arrested in October 2018 at his home in the Budlong Woods neighborhood, the Islamic State was still considered one of the world's greatest terrorist threats, even though its caliphate had crumbled and the group had lost nearly all the territory it had seized in Iraq and Syria.
Thousands of ISIS fighters were killed in the process and thousands more remain in prison. Despite its decline, however, U.S. officials have said the group still has an active core of battle-hardened militants, many operating in sleeper cells, and other terrorists groups remain loyal to the Islamic State's causes and are capable of striking on its behalf.
In the charges, prosecutors alleged that although al Safoo was not a sworn ISIS member, he was a leader of a group called Khattab Media Foundation, an internet-based propaganda organization that swore an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State.
'Brothers, roll up your sleeves!' al Safoo allegedly posted in one Khattab-related forum in May 2018. 'Cut video publications into small clips, take still shots, and post the hard work of your brothers in the apostate's pages and sites. Participate in the war, and spread fear.'
Authorities said the foundation ran like a well-oiled public relations firm, with writers, editors, tech advisers and audiovisual producers all pushing a central message of fear, violence and death. To accomplish his goals, al Safoo and his co-conspirators hacked legitimate social media accounts to make it seem like the messages were coming from actual users and to make it harder for platforms such as Twitter, now known as X, to take them down.
When mistakes were made, employees were reprimanded, according to a criminal complaint unsealed against al Safoo in 2018. At one point, an editor sent out an officewide note about an embarrassing gaffe on a design featuring President Donald Trump that a member had mistranslated from Arabic using a Google app, the complaint stated.
'Instead of writing 'beheading' Trump, he wrote 'kissing and hugging' Trump,' the federal charges quoted the memo as saying. 'The Americans started laughing at the Islamic State. The image has circulated and it became a joke.'
The charges alleged the Khattab group regularly promoted ISIS-inspired attacks, including the December 2017 shooting at a church in Egypt that killed nine people. But it also highlighted violence in the U.S. that was not connected to the terrorist group. The day after a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas in October 2017, killing 59, the media group called it a 'blessed operation … executed by one of the soldiers of the Caliphate,' according to the complaint.
According to evidence at trial, after al Safoo's arrest, Khattab was responsible for an internet post calling for the beheading of then-Chicago FBI Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey Sallett.
Al Safoo was not accused of playing a role in that post.
In his closing argument to Blakey earlier this month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Peabody challenged the assertion of al Safoo's attorneys that what he was posting was protected First Amendment speech, saying al Safoo was 'not just repeating Islamic State propaganda' but 'dressing it up, lots of guns and fire and destruction, ready for distribution.'
'Media was the key. It was how the Islamic State grew and gained followers,' Peabody said. 'It's how they recruited fighters, it's how they inspired lone wolf attacks. And it was how they got their message out.'
Al Safoo's attorney, James Vanzant, said in his closing remarks that much of the content his client put out was just 'repackaged' material from news reports already online. Other things were just plain silly, he said, pointing to the infographic posted by al Safoo's group depicting a headless Santa Claus delivering a package that contained a bomb and the words 'Our gifts are ready.'
'A lot of this stuff is juvenile…I've seen worse than this on Xbox chats,' Vanzant said. 'I don't know… Can we threaten Santa Claus? I guess we have a war on Christmas. But this is not a real threat…It's tasteless. I don't like looking at it but that doesn't matter. They have a right to say it.'
A key portion of the prosecution's evidence focused on the videotaped testimony of al Anzi, a leader in the Islamic State's propaganda operation convicted in Iraqi courts. Al-Anzi sat for a sworn deposition several years ago in a courthouse in Bagdad, where he testified about his communications with Safoo.
Dressed in a yellow jail outfit and speaking through an interpreter, al Anzi testified that Safoo, whom he knew as Abu Al-Iraqi, was affiliated with Khattab Media Foundation and that he had online communications with him about conducting a terrorist operation in Illinois, thought he could not remember specifics on the exact target.
Al Safoo also sent the $400 to him, al Anzi testified, but he was clear that he wanted it to go to help refugee families who were starving in Syria at the time. Al Anzi said the money was indeed spent on medicine for one family and for food for another.
A former web developer and internet technology specialist, al Safoo holds a masters degree in computer sciences and had been living in the U.S for about 10 years before his arrest. He's since been held in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.