Cary man pleads guilty to providing support to terrorist group

A Cary man this week pleaded guilty in federal court to trying to support al-Qaida, a terrorist network.

Basit Javed Sheikh pleaded guilty Wednesday in to to providing “material support and resources” to Jabhat al-Nusrah, alias for al-Qaida.

Federal prosecutors first charged Basit Javed Sheikh on Nov. 5, 2013, when he was 34. The native of Pakistan had been living for years in the United States as a legal resident, U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. said in a news release Wednesday.

Sheikh is accused of expressing support for Jahbat al-Nusrah, an alias for al-Qaida, in Facebook posts in 2013. Prosecutors say Sheikh also posted articles acknowledging that Jahbat al-Nusrah had been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.

In January 2015, a judge ordered Sheikh to be involuntarily committed in a hospital for 120 days for psychiatric treatment. The judge told Sheikh he faced the possibility of the involuntary administration of psychiatric drugs so that he might better understand the seriousness of the charges against him.

While pleading guilty Wednesday in a federal courtroom, Sheikh acknowledged that he will likely be removed from the United States, Higdon said.

Sheikh’s online activities attracted the attention of federal authorities in 2013. Prosecutors said Sheikh formed a relationship with an undercover FBI officer who offered help in traveling to Syria in support of violent jihad.

Another person was to also help Sheikh.

“In reality, both of these individuals were working with and for the FBI,” Higdon said in the news release. “Sheikh reached out to the individual he believed to be a Jahbat al-Nusrah member and expressed his desire to travel to Syria in order to ‘help the mujahideen … in any way I can.’”

“When asked how he wanted to help, Sheikh responded ‘logistics, media, fight too, God willing.’”

When the FBI’s undercover employee told Sheikh that fighting was not for everyone, “Sheikh replied that he was ‘serious’ and ready to be a martyr,” Higdon reported.

Sheikh thought the FBI agent could help smuggle him from Lebanon into Syria. So Sheikh purchased a one-way ticket to Lebanon that was departing from Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Nov. 2, 2013.

Prosecutors say Sheikh obtained a boarding pass, checked in his luggage and went through the security screening. He was taken into custody before boarding the plane.

In early 2015, Sheikh appeared in a federal courtroom in Raleigh, where he argued that the United States should pay reparations for war deaths in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East – “100 camels worth of monetary compensation,” The News & Observer reported.

In a series of run-on sentences, he talked about cluster bombs, the pain he felt for Pakistanis killed in the conflict, President Barack Obama, the U.S. attorney general, his family, the government and his desire to be released from custody so he could go to the airport and “leave this country for good.”

“I have a right to travel the world,” Sheikh said in one of his many outbursts. “I was leaving this country. What’s your moral rationale for holding me?”

Sheikh apparently made three or more attempts to join the Syrian civil war, according to the FBI.

On Sept. 5, 2013, he booked a one-way flight to Istanbul for the next day. But he abandoned his plans, according to court documents, because he couldn’t reach his contact in Turkey, and he “could not muster the strength to leave his parents.”

Sheikh’s mother had said in previous hearings that her son suffers from anxiety and depression and spent most of his time before his arrest in her home in front of a computer screen.

Sheikh could face 15 years in prison.

Higdon said that Sheikh’s “interest in advancing an extremist ideology and his willingness to take steps to advance violence in support of that ideology is a chilling reminder of ongoing radicalization in our midst.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 3:28 PM.