The two accused are brothers who came to the US for engineering program.
By Raif Karerat
The Justice Department is charging four Ohio men with raising funds for a terrorist in Yemen, two of whom are brothers from India.
The four are accused in a plot to raise cash for Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The indictment says the money was raised between 2008 and 2009.
Al-Awlaki was a key player within the leadership of al-Qaida and was designated a global terrorist in 2010. The men provided money, equipment and other help to al-Awlaki, intending for it to be used in the “violent jihad against the U.S. and U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
The men indicted are two sets of brothers: Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 37, and Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad, 36; and Asif Ahmed Salim, 35, and Sultane Roome Salim, 40.
“Farooq Mohammad was an Indian citizen who was an engineering student at Ohio State University between 2002 and 2004. In or around March 2008, he married a U.S. citizen. His brother, Ibrahim Mohammad, was also an Indian citizen who studied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2001 through 2005. In or around 2006, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, and married a U.S. citizen. He became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in or around 2007,” read a Justice Department press release.
Both Ibrahim Mohammad and Sultane Salim were arrested on Nov. 5, but the other two have yet to be apprehended and are believed to be abroad.
“It’s an ongoing operation, but neither of those two [still not arrested] are in the United States,” said Mike Tobin, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.
Meanwhile, conservative outlet Breitbart noted that the revelation that two individuals, admitted as immigrants to the U.S., were later indicted for terrorist activities comes as lawmakers raise concerns about the national security implications of admitting hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees from terrorist hot spots into the U.S.