Saturday August 14, 2021
By Ken Palmer
CREDIT: WXYZ
GRAND RAPIDS – One of three Lansing men charged with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group has been ordered to serve more than eight years in federal prison.
Mohamud Muse, 25, received 98 months in prison from Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker on Thursday. Jonker also ordered that Muse spend 10 years on supervised release after he leaves prison.
His 22-year-old brother, Muse Muse, was sentenced last week to 78 months in federal prison for his role in the conspiracy.
The third man, Mohamed Haji, is the Muse brothers' cousin. He also pleaded guilty in connection with the plot and is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 22.
Prosecutors said the three men conspired for two years to provide support and resources, including personnel, to the Islamic State.
All three men are naturalized U.S. citizens who were born in Kenya and had lived in Lansing since at last late 2016, the government said.
They were arrested in January 2019 at the Grand Rapids airport, where the government said Muse Muse was beginning a series of flights to Somalia to join the IS.
The government said all three men worked to raise money for Muse Muse's journey to join the IS and that all three pledged their allegiance to the IS in recorded videos.
During the sentencing hearings, prosecutors submitted records showing the men had "numerous conversations" dating to early 2017 about traveling overseas to join terrorists, even adopting aliases they would use, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release.
The arrests came after a lengthy FBI investigation using Facebook and undercover agents.
On Thursday, Jonker said he believed Mohamud Muse was more culpable than Muse Muse because evidence showed Mohamud Muse was the first to embrace the IS’s ideology and helped radicalize his younger brother, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report