Ex-New Jersey Man Charged With Conspiring to Support ISIS

A 20-year-old New Jersey man who had planned to recruit an army to support ISIS was charged with attempting to provide support to the terror group on Monday.

The indictment notes that the Saadeh brothers’ parents were deported from the U.S. “after sustaining criminal convictions”.

The former Rutherford resident’s arrest came after authorities arrested his 23-year-old brother, Alaa, and 21-year-old Samuel Rahamin Topaz of Fort Lee on similar charges.

According to an informant who was close to him for years, Saadeh became a “radicalized support of ISIL” by April 2015, Fishman said.

Nader Saadeh, 20, of Rutherford, is charged with conspiring to provide material support to the radical group. He is due to appear at a federal court in New Jersey on Monday. Citing messages on Twitter and other social media uncovered after prosecutors began investigating the group, along with other computer records, Nader Saadeh starting looking for airline tickets-at first to Turkey-after learning that the deli where he worked was to be sold.

Saadeh’s radical fantasies apparently anxious his overseas mother, who begged him to “not go anywhere if u love me” in a text message to her son.

Authorities say Nader Saadeh traveled to the Middle East in May to join the Islamic State. In addition, Nader Saadeh said that ISIL’s execution of a captured Jordanian Air Force pilot by burning him alive and the murders of several staff members of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris earlier this year were justified.

Once arrested or shortly thereafter, both Topaz and Alaa Saadeh told the FBI of their plans to join ISIL and their viewing of ISIL propaganda videos.

If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Topaz told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he agreed with the Saadeh brothers and the cooperator to join ISIL, it says. Furthermore, Alaa Saadeh stated that Conspirator 1 provided Nader Saadeh with the name and number of an ISIL contact who could facilitate Nader Saadeh’s passage to ISIL-controlled area the night before he left, according to Fishman. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys L. Judson Welle, Dennis C. Carletta and Francisco J. Navarro of the District of New Jersey, with the assistance of Trial Attorney Robert Sander of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.