A Virginia man who allegedly said he wanted to join ISIS so he could “chop (off) heads” pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to help the savage terror group.
Joseph Hassan Farrokh, 28, of Woodbridge, Virginia, admitted to his sick plan to “provide material support and resources” to ISIS at a hearing in federal court in Alexandria.
The feds said the Pennsylvania-born Farrokh started plotting with another man named Mahmoud Amin Elhassan in August of 2015 to join the Islamic State. Farrokh planned to hook up with the group in Syria, and then Elhassan would follow, court papers say.
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The pair “spoke openly with each other” about “supporting violent jihad,” and “watched videos online that glorified terrorism in support of Islam,” court filings say.
They communicated partly via an app which they mistakenly thought “could not be detected by law enforcement,” court papers say.
They tried turning to like-minded kooks for help, and Farrokh got frustrated at the slow pace of the plotting, telling his friend “he had no patience and that he wanted to go right away and ‘chop their heads,'” court papers say.
One of the ISIS sympathizers they were put in touch with was an FBI source who Farrokh was initially suspicious of. “Farrokh suggested that they swear an oath that anyone working with the kuffar (non-Muslims) would suffer the curse of Allah. Farrokh swore that oath; he said that he was smiling during the oath because if he goes to jail as a result of the meeting he would feel good because it was for Allah,” court papers say.
“Farrokh said that he wanted to kill for Allah’s sake and be killed for Allah’s sake.”
He later took a pledge of allegiance to ISIS, and was arrested before he boarded a flight to Jordan, where he’d planned to make his way to Syria, prosecutors say.
Elhassan was arrested the same day. The case against him is still pending.
Farrokh faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in July.
