No LOL Matter: FBI Trolls Social Media for Would-Be Jihadis - NBC News.com
When Basit Javid Sheikh told his new Facebook friend, a Syrian nurse, that he wanted to travel from his home in North Carolina to Syria to fight with the opposition group Ahrar ash-Sham, “she” messaged him back and suggested he instead join the Al-Nusra Front, a rival group affiliated with al Qaeda.
When, in a subsequent conversation via Skype, a “trusted brother” who was actually an undercover FBI employee, “told Basit that he could help get him inside Al-Nusra. … Basit stated that he did not want to be one of those brothers who kept sitting at home,” according to court records.
Sheikh, who apparently had romantic feelings toward the nurse and even proposed marriage at one point, according to his attorney, eventually agreed to join Al-Nusra, purchased a plane ticket to Beirut and prepared for his journey to jihad. But after clearing security at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Nov. 2, 2013, he was arrested and charged the next day with supporting a foreign terrorist organization.
