Authorities Cite Plan by 3 Men to Aid ISIS

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/authorities-cite-plan-by-3-men-to-aid-isis.html

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BOSTON — The beach, enrobed in a damp chill, was empty, the federal authorities said, except for three men hatching a terrorism plot.

Two days later, one of the men, David Wright, 25, texted one of the others, Nicholas Rovinski, 24: “An emergency took place this morning.”

The emergency, according to an affidavit, was that the third man, Usaamah Rahim, 26, had been fatally shot by law enforcement officials who said he had threatened them with a large knife. On Friday, Mr. Wright and Mr. Rovinski were in custody, the latest Americans to face charges related to the Islamic State.

Mr. Rovinski, who was arrested on Thursday, appeared in federal court here on Friday, clad in sweatpants, shackles and what appeared to be bedroom slippers a size too big. He and Mr. Wright have been charged with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State. Mr. Wright was already in custody, charged last week with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The affidavit, released on Friday, is the authorities’ most detailed account yet of a Boston case that has raised anxiety about the Islamic State’s influence beyond the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. The two men are among dozens of Americans who have been accused of assisting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

On May 31 on a Rhode Island beach, the charging document says, the three men, “apparently motivated” by Islamist extremists, discussed beheading the organizer of an exhibit in Garland, Tex., that had displayed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

But two days later, the authorities said, the plan had shifted away from killing Pamela Geller, the conservative blogger who organized the Texas event but who was not identified in the affidavit. Instead, Mr. Rahim decided to imminently target police officers, or as he put it, the “boys in blue,” the document said, a change that prompted the police to move in. On the morning of June 2, the Boston police and F.B.I. agents approached Mr. Rahim in a parking lot, where, the authorities say, he was killed after he refused to put down the knife.

The document said Mr. Wright told investigators that he had introduced his uncle, Mr. Rahim, to the Islamic State’s cause, saying that it was a holy one. The document said that Mr. Wright also knew the Islamic State had called for the beheading of Ms. Geller, and that Mr. Rahim had said he wanted to carry it out.

Mr. Rovinski, who converted to Islam two years ago, had posted online comments supportive of the Islamic State, the document said, and listed a YouTube video on how to make a machete as one of his favorites. He also posted a gleeful comment online when an Amtrak train derailed last month in Philadelphia, killing seven people.

The affidavit said that both Mr. Wright and Mr. Rovinski told investigators that they supported the Islamic State.

Mr. Wright advised Mr. Rahim to make a will and destroy his digital files before carrying out the beheading, the document said. It also said that Mr. Wright discussed with Mr. Rovinski the very law under which they are now charged, saying that it was so vague that the government could “get you ... on material support just for speaking ... positively about this.”

Matthew Segal, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said that while “conspiracy to murder is a terrible, serious crime,” prosecutors have “larded” their case with allegations about the defendants’ beliefs.

“This strategy creates a real risk that juries will convict people not because of their violent actions or plans, but instead because of their offensive ideologies,” Mr. Segal said. Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and Intistar A. Rabb, lawyers for the family of Mr. Rahim, released a statement on Friday raising questions about the circumstances in which officers approached Mr. Rahim on June 2, citing remarks made on the radio by Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, that the officers had been ordered not to let Mr. Rahim board a bus that day.

“Congressman Lynch’s admission that law enforcement intended to prohibit Usaamah Rahim from exercising his constitutional freedom of movement is strong evidence,” the statement said, “that federal and local law enforcement attempted an unlawful, warrantless arrest of Usaamah Rahim.”