New York Man Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

A 22-year-old man named Ali Saleh was arrested on Thursday for attemping to provide material support to the Islamic State (ISIS), according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He was arrested in Queens, New York.

"I'm ready to die for the Caliphate, prison is nothing," Saleh at one point wrote on Twitter, according to the Justice Department. He used his Twitter account to communicate with an ISIS recruiter and asked for advice on how to travel to the Middle East to join the group, authorities said.

Saleh repeatedly attempted to make plans to travel to the Middle East to join the terrorist organization, the Justice Department alleges. In August 2014, he booked a flight from New York's JFK Airport to Istanbul, Turkey. A number of extremists use the Turkish border to cross into Syria. He did not board that flight.

He attempted to board another flight from JFK to Cairo in July, but was denied access to this flight and to two others, one from Newark and another from Philadelphia.

After repeatedly being denied access to flights to the Middle East from the United States, Saleh attempted to travel to Toronto from Cleveland by train. He was unable to do this as well.

"By his own words, Ali Saleh was willing to pledge allegiance to, and die for ISIL, an organization that has called for terrorist attacks against the United States," New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton said in a statement. "Saleh's attempts to travel to Syria and ISIL's battlefields were halted by good intelligence and smart law enforcement. I commend the agents and detectives of the Joint Terrorism Task Force as well as the dedicated prosecutors at the office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York."

The case will be prosecuted by the National Security and Cybercrime Section of the Eastern District of New York.