OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The FBI arrested a man from Texas on Thursday because they say he tried to help ISIS and planned a terrorist attack in the United States from his apartment in Houston.
Anas Said, who is 28 years old, was looking for ways to do dangerous things in the Houston area for the Islamic State, according to the police. He is being charged with trying to give the terrorist group material support.
Said was arrested last week at the apartment complex where he lives, according to Douglas Williams, who is in charge of the FBI field office, the Southern District of Texas said in a press release.
Williams said that while Said was in jail, he admitted to looking into how to attack local military recruiting centers, offering his home as a safe haven for ISIS members, bragging that he would carry out an attack “9/11-style” if he had the resources, and trying to make ISIS propaganda.
“We stopped a potential terrorist attack from happening right here in Houston! Any day we can publicly say that is a good day,” FBI Houston said.
Said’s attorney, Balemar Zuniga, said his client is being held in custody but appeared in court for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday.
“The indictment only alleges that he supported a terrorist group through the production of videos and propaganda,” he said, noting that federal prosecutors mentioned the plotting of terror acts but have not charged him with such. “None of that is alleged.”
Said has been on the FBI’s radar since the bureau received a tip in 2017 about him purchasing two stickers: “one containing an image of the Dome of the Rock2 with an ISIS flag overlaying the image, and another showing the white silhouette of a man holding a rifle with the caption, ‘Winning the Islamic Nation.'”
“Does it seem a bit excessive? Yes,” Zuniga said.
The FBI questioned Said four times in 2018 concerning the sticker purchases.
“During an interview conducted on or about January 29, 2018, the Defendant admitted both stickers were meant to show support for ISIS,” though he did not support killing in the name of ISIS at the time, according to a detention memo laying out the allegations against Said. Said began supporting the ISIS ideology in 2015 when his family returned to the U.S. from Lebanon.
Zuniga said that Said was born in the US and went to Lebanon with his family when he was a child. In 2014, he came back to the U.S. Zuniga said that Said doesn’t dislike the U.S., even though he is accused of crimes there.
“I would not say that at all,” he said. “I think that he is certainly passionate about protecting his Islamic religion. I don’t think he has any particular animosity toward the United States itself.”
The report says that in an interview with the FBI in 2019, Said said that “he no longer consumed radical Islamic propaganda and only used the internet for schoolwork and to watch sports.”
But the DOJ says that wasn’t true.
“On or about October 18, 2023, pursuant to legal process, FBI received information from Meta Platforms, Inc. (‘Meta’) regarding 11 Facebook accounts used by the Defendant that showed he continued to support ISIS and the violent attacks carried out in its name,” according to the DOJ.
His family members “expressed their concerns” in FBI interviews, and “subsequent analysis of the defendant’s electronic devices revealed multiple encrypted messaging applications containing records of his efforts to create and disseminate propaganda that glorified ISIS’s ongoing violence, the evidence underlying the material support offense charged in the indictment,” the department alleged.
Said reportedly broke his cellphone when FBI agents carried out a search warrant against him last Friday because he wouldn’t cooperate.
