Amidst the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s warnings against the efforts of ISIS to recruit young Muslim Americans and the reassurances made by New York Police that the public would remain safe during the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays, a federal court in Minnesota sentenced three Somali-American men to sentences of varying length for cooperating with ISIS during 2014 and 2015.

One of the men named Abdullah Yusuf, 20, admitted that he intended to travel to Turkey and then to Syria in 2014 in order to join ISIS. He told the judge “I no longer believe in ISIS’ ideology and I will not believe in it in the future”. Yusuf was arrested at Minneapolis airport in Minnesota on his way to Turkey, and was sentenced to three years in prison. Another man called Ali Warsame, 21, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and said that he collaborated with Yusuf and helped him to make the necessary arrangements in order to travel. However, the longest prison sentence (ten years) was given to Zakaria Yousuf Abdul Rahman (21 years). Yusuf and Warsame both cooperated with the FBI in exposing the role of Abdul Rahman who was the main culprit.

Until the beginning of this year, senior US security officials have repeatedly warned that the number of people who want to join ISIS in the areas that the organisation controls is increasing in America. US security services arrested dozens of people who wanted to join ISIS last year.