O.C. man pleads not guilty to terrorism charges

By Michael Webster: Syndicated Investigative Reporter

 A 21-year-old California man originally charged with lying on a passport application so he could travel to Syria pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court to new charges that allege he also tried to provide support to a terrorist organization.

Adam Dandach entered the plea during a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana less than two weeks after federal prosecutors enhanced their case against him to include trying to help the Islamic State forces in Syria.

Federal authorities allege that Dandach, also known as Fadi Fadi Dandach, was planning to join ISIS, just like  Douglas McAuthur McCain,  who was an American jihadist who was killed in Syria in late August 2014, in an encounter with the Free Syrian Army while fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq. He grew up in Riverside County and lived for a time with his grandfather in Orange County, he appeared in a 2010 video urging Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, calling it a duty and an obligation. 

Dandach, FBI investigators allege in court documents, declared that he would “assist ISIS with anything ISIS asked him to do.”

And ISIS – an acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – has become synonymous with brutal violence, recently ranging from the beheading of American journalist James Foley to the mass executions of Christens and more than 500 tribesmen in Syria.

Dandach adleddly had intended to board a Delta Airlines flight to Turkey, cross the border into Syria and join ISIS, according to federal agents who detained him July 2 at John Wayne Airport.

His attorney, Pal Lengyel-Leahu, has said Dandach is innocent and will fight the charges in court.

Dandach had already pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges of passport fraud.

Court records indicated Dandach was stopped in July in the Orange County airport while trying to board a flight to Turkey with an expedited replacement passport he got after he said he accidentally threw his old one away

“Mr. Dandach posed a threat to national security by expressing sympathy with, and a willingness to join” Islamic State forces, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, told reporters. “We’re committed to protecting American resources and personnel by preventing, whenever we can, the expansion of their forces.”

The FBI said Dandach told agents he planned to pledge allegiance and offer to help the Islamic State in Syria and believed the killings of American soldiers were justified.

When told he could face criminal charges for lying to get an expedited passport, Dandach said he was more disappointed about not going to Syria than about getting in trouble with the law, according to court papers.

A June 16 trial date has been set for Dandach, who is a resident of Orange County.

According to reports Dandach grew up “like every American kid” and was a community college student and deeply religious person, his attorney said. He was traveling overseas on his own to help widows and orphans, Lengyel-Leahu said, but he could not specify where Dandach would provide the assistance.

“He’s always said the same thing, he was going over there to help,” Lengyel-Leahu told reporters after the hearing. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

If convicted, Dandach could face up to 15 years in federal prison on the terrorism charge, and up to 25 years on each of the other counts, federal authorities said.

Dozens of Americans in recent years have traveled overseas to serve the cause of terrorist movements. Their numbers are estimated at more than 175, almost all of them young men, according to government officials and people who track terrorist activities in the United States.

“It’s a relatively small number of people who are committed to doing mass-casualty attacks,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

But the risk American jihadis pose to their homeland is hard to quantify because, Levin added, “so much of it depends on the luck of those who are thoroughly committed to an attack.”

Still, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI recently urged all law enforcement agencies to be on the alert for possible attacks coming from radicalized sympathizers of ISIS in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes.

No group has been more successful lately than ISIS in attracting disaffected Westerners from here and Europe – both converts and those raised as Muslims who have gravitated to extremism.

Sources:

The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP VIA AP

Wikipedia

O.C. Register

Laguna Journal