COLUMBUS – Four Ohio men, including three former Ohio State University students – one a Columbus resident – are charged with raising cash for a designated global terrorist in Yemen.
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One of the men was arrested in the Columbus area on Thursday morning and taken to Toledo to be arraigned in federal court. Another was arrested in Texas; the other two still have not been apprehended.
“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.
The four are accused in a plot to raise cash for Anwar Al-Alwaki, who died in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
Al-Alwaki was a key al-Qaida leader who was designated a global terrorist in 2010. The men provided money, equipment and other help to al-Alwaki, intended 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.
Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 37; Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad, 36; Asif Ahmed Salim, 35; and Sultane Roome Salim, 40, were indicted on one count each of conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists; one count each of providing material support and resources to terrorists; and one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office. Farooq Mohammad and Ibrahim Mohammad both face an additional count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Farooq Mohammad was an Indian citizen who was an engineering student at OSU between 2002 and 2004 and married a U.S. citizen.
His brother, Ibrahim, was also an Indian citizen who studied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2001 through 2005. Sometime around 2006, authorities say Ibrahim moved to Toledo, where he also married a U.S. citizen and became a permanent resident about a year later.
Asif Salim was a U.S. citizen who studied at OSU between 2000 and 2005 and later moved to Overland Park, Kan.
His brother, Sultane, is also a U.S. citizen who moved to the Columbus area from Chicago in 2012 and was arrested here Thursday.
According to the indictment, the four conspired to provide money, equipment and other assistance to Anwar Al-Awlaki from January 2005 through January 2012 “to be used in furtherance of violent jihad against the U.S. and U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world.”
Al-Awlaki was a key leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, credited with masterminding the so-called “underwear bomb” plot, intended to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner in 2009.
The indictment alleges that Farooq and Ibrahim Mohammad obtained money by opening credit cards and withdrawing money with no intention of repaying it. They allegedly made various financial transactions in 2008 and 2009, and communicated about raising funds for a trip to the Middle East.
On July 22, 2009, Farooq Mohammad travelled with two other people to Yemen to meet Awlaki, the indictment states. Unable to meet with Awlaki, they met with one of his associates in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and gave him approximately $22,000.