Two middle-aged men were arrested on June the 1st for conducting Terrorist Activities on behalf of the Hizballah Islamic Jihad organization. Ali Kourani aged 32 of New York and Samer El Debek aged 37 of Michigan were arrested for conducting jihad training and conspiring to commit terrorism activities.
Two Men Arrested for Terrorist Activities on Behalf of Hizballah's Islamic Jihad Organization https://t.co/tGvKlyIwfj
— Justice Department (@TheJusticeDept) June 8, 2017
How they committed the crimes
The two were recruited as operatives of Hizballah and later received military-style training in Lebanon.
The two learned how to use machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. After receiving training, El Debek was sent to locate U.S and Israel embassies in Panama. Kourani, on the other hand, was assigned to identify U.S targets such as military and law enforcement facilities in the city of New York. The surveillance by the two was believed to be future U.S attacks conspiracies by Hizballah.
Their arrests and charges
Kourani was arrested in the Bronx; he will be accused of providing and attempting to provide support to Hizballah, receiving military-type training from the group, weapon offenses such as using a machine gun and grenades, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and receiving U.S citizenship through fraud.
El Debek was arrested in Livonia in the state of Michigan. He will be charged with the same charges as Kourani apart from the accusations of receiving U.S citizenship through fraud.
Personal information of the two terrorists
Kourani was born in Lebanon. He received Hizballah weapons training in the year 2000 when he was only 16 years old.
He moved to the U.S in 2003 and received a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering in 2009; he then obtained a master's in business administration in 2013. He joined Jihad in 2008. After joining the jihad, he began communicating with a jihad mentor in Lebanon. He then traveled to Lebanon to meet his mentor who provided him with the necessary training to commit Jihad against the United States.
He then came back to the U.S to conduct surveillance in Manhattan and Brooklin on U.S military and law enforcement facilities. He would then send vital information he obtained to his mentor back in Lebanon.
El Dedek was recruited to Jihad by Hizballah in either late 2007 or early 2008. He began receiving a salary from the organization until the year 2015. He traveled to Lebanon on several occasions to receive military training from the heads of the organization between 2008 and 2014. Part of his training was bomb making techniques. He helped Hizballah in its missions in Thailand and Panama because he could quickly enter the countries with his U.S passport without a visa. According to The Fbi, El Dedek conducted more than 250 Facebook searches on jihadi topics such as Hizballah martyrs and martyrs of Islamic resistance.
