A New York man repeatedly travelled to the Middle East to try to join the Islamic State or another extremist group in Syria and later told authorities he'd been prepared to strap on a bomb to sacrifice himself for jihad.
And after police on suburban Long Island arrested Elvis Redzepagic on February 2 on a minor, unrelated charge, he told them: "I'm going to leave this country, and I'm going to come back with an Army - Islam is coming," according to a federal court complaint unsealed on Saturday.
The 26-year-old US citizen was being held without bail after appearing in a Brooklyn federal court on Saturday. He's charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation.
US authorities have prosecuted a number of people accused of aiming to join the Islamic State group and other militants in recent years, though in some cases, the accused haven't actually succeeded in travelling overseas.
Redzepagic "was persistent in his efforts" to join Islamic militants in civil-war-ravaged Syria, making it to Turkey in 2015 and Jordan last year and even getting to the Syrian border, said William F. Sweeney, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office.
Redzepagic told authorities after his arrest that he'd become a devout Muslim while in Montenegro, in the Balkans, and believed a cousin was a battalion commander in Syria for the Islamic State or the group once known as the Nusra Front, according to the court complaint. The latter group - now called the Fatah al-Sham Front, and also known at times as Jabhat al-Nusra - is an al-Qaida affiliate.
He'd been willing to put on a bomb and sacrifice himself, he told authorities after his arrest, though he told them at another point he just wanted to "feed the children" in Syria. But frustrated that he didn't getting more help crossing the border, Redzepagic returned to the US, the complaint says.
"Since I got back from Turkey from trying to perform jihad and join Jabhat al-Nusra the CIA has been bothering me," he wrote to a Facebook contact in October 2015, the complaint says. "It's annoying but I out smarted them."
CIA spokespeople didn't immediately respond to a message Saturday about the case.
