He was told that his faith was “ultimate” and asked if he was willing to follow it even to martyrdom, or shahada. “With that in mind, brother Abdullah, we ask if you are willing to be a shaheed if the will of Allah comes upon you to be one?” Tounisi responded: “If the opportunity is given to me to attain shahada I will take it.” A week later he booked a flight to Turkey, and soon after that his contact e-mailed him a bus ticket from Istanbul to Gaziantep, a city near the Syrian border.
What Tounsisi didn’t realize was that the site had been set up by the FBI and he was corresponding with an undercover agent. On April 19, 2013, as he waited at O’Hare for his flight to Istanbul, Tounisi was arrested and charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, Tounisi faces up to 15 years in prison. His attorney has been talking with prosecutors about a plea deal, and a hearing is scheduled for later this month.
The Chicago-based cases are not an aberration. Across the country, federal investigations have targeted people with intellectual or mental disabilities, and many relied on secret evidence, according to “The Illusion of Justice,” a 2014 report from Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School. “At times, in aggressively pursuing terrorism threats before they even materialize, U.S. law enforcement overstepped its role by effectively participating in developing terrorism plots,” the report concluded.
Article Appeared @http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/terrorism-sami-hassoun-adel-daoud-wrigley-field-abdella-ahmad-tounisi/Content?oid=18243769