New Jersey man arrested for conspiring with ISIS

A New Jersey man was arrested early Monday for allegedly planning to provide materials and support to ISIS, the New Jersey Department of Justice reports.

Alaa Saadeh, 23, was a Hudson County resident charged with supposedly conspiring with other conspirators to provide services and personnel to ISIS, and tampering with a witness trying to get them to lie to the FBI.

Saadeh appeared at Newark federal court Monday afternoon. As it was his first appearance he did not enter a plea. Saadeh was held without bail afterward, reported NBC.

He supposedly said that “given the state of the world we live in currently everyone is going to stand up now and no one is going to stay quiet” and to not “do what [he] is going to do” would be against his Islamic religion, stated FBI documents.

Saadeh stated that a burning of a Jordanian Air Force pilot was “justified” and that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber, was “framed” according to the official complaint filed against Saadeh.

Saadeh’s 17-year-old brother supposedly co-conspired with him to aid ISIS. A Fort Lee man Samuel Rahamin Topaz was also named as a co-conspirator.

An anonymous individual told the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that the brothers allegedly said the United States has “concentration camps for Muslims.”

Officials used a search warrant to investigate Saadeh’s brother’s internet search history. Reportedly he looked up multiple ISIS websites, propaganda and two-way tickets to Turkey, reported court documents.

After realizing that he and his brother were under FBI surveillance Saadeh allegedly told an individual New Jersey not to tell the FBI/JTTF about his brother’s travel plants to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. Saadeh said to “play dumb” and be “honest up to a point,” but to not reveal information about ISIS.

This is another arrest in a string of ISIS related cases in the New Jersey-New York area in June.

On June 13 Queens resident Munther Omar Saleh was arrested for allegedly conspiring with ISIS to build a pressure-cooker bomb and detonated at one of New York’s landmarks. He was allegedly a co-conspirator alongside Saadeh, Saadeh’s brother, and Topaz.

On June 17 Staten Island man Fareed Mumuni was arrested for allegedly conspiring with ISIS and attacking a FBI agent with a knife during a search warrant investigation. He was under investigation for his connection with Saleh.

With the Fourth of July near the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FBI and National Counterterrorism Center issued a bulletin urging law enforcement to stay alert during this high profile holiday period.