An affidavit filed in US federal court details how an American man exploited Turkey’s position as a key transit hub for jihadist fighters to attempt to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, confirming legally what has been known all along by Turkey observers.
NORDIC MONITOR -- Filed in the Northern District of Florida, the affidavit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) accused 38-year-old Mohamed Fathy Suliman, a US citizen born in Washington, D.C., of plotting his travel to ISIS-held territory by disguising his true destination from his family, booking a one-way ticket from Orlando to Alexandria, Egypt, via Istanbul.
Instead of boarding his scheduled Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Alexandria, Suliman paid cash at an airport tourism desk for a business-class ticket to Gaziantep — a Turkish city located roughly 35 miles from the Syrian border and, at the time, a major staging ground for ISIS recruits.
According to the FBI, Suliman admitted during a 2018 interview at the US Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, that he had researched online how to reach Syria using ISIS-linked websites. Those instructions, he said, directed him to travel through Istanbul and on to Gaziantep, where he was told to stay at local hotels and seek out guides who could arrange an illegal crossing into Syria.