Connecticut
U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley sentenced Kevin Iman McCormick, 30, of Hamden, to 12 years in prison for trying to join ISIS, a terrorist group, according to officials.
According to court documents and statements made in court, between August and October 2019, McCormick made several statements to others expressing a desire to travel to Syria and to fight for ISIS.
In August 2019, McCormick stated to members of a Muslim community center that “we should support ISIS” and “jihad is the way to go.”
In another conversation in October 2019, McCormick stated, “I gotta fight bro, because those people, Abu Masa and ISIL, they fought for me bro, I know it, I can feel it, in my heart. So it’s my time to fight . . . It just is what it is bro, it’s just my – it’s just my time to go bro.”
When McCormick was asked to elaborate on where he would like to travel, McCormick responded, “I don’t know, I don’t know bro – it’s gotta be like Syria. Where ISIL is at….whichever place is easiest, whatever place I can get there the fastest, the quickest, the easiest, and where I can have a rifle and I can have some people bro. That’s what I need, I need a rifle and I need some people, I need Islamic law, I need, that’s what I need, because if I have these things, it’s gonna to be very hard to kill me.”
The Department of Homeland Security denied McCormick’s attempt to board a flight from Connecticut to Jamaica on October 12, 2019.
McCormick subsequently told an individual that he wanted to travel to Jamaica, and then onward to Syria to join ISIS. He also indicated that he wanted to acquire weapons, officials stated.
On Oct. 19, 2019, McCormick made a video during which he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its then-leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Also on that date, he purchased a plane ticket from Toronto, Canada, to Amman, Jordan.
On Oct. 21, 2019, McCormick was arrested after traveling to a small private airport in Connecticut where he expected to board a plane to fly him to Canada.
McCormick has been detained since his arrest. On Jan. 12, he pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
This FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) investigated the case with the assistance of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Neeraj Patel and Peter Jongbloed for the District of Connecticut, and Trial Attorneys Justin Sher and John Cella of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section prosecuted the case.