{"id":116275,"date":"2026-04-17T12:18:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116275"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:18:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:18:56","slug":"116275","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116275","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago Man Gets 25 Years for Serving as a \u2018Press Person\u2019 for the ISIS Terrorist Organization<\/a><\/p>\n

A federal judge on Thursday handed a 25-year prison sentence to a former Chicago\u00a0software\u00a0developer\u00a0who the feds say functioned as a \u201cpress person for the Islamic State\u201d\u00a0terrorist organization\u00a0and held a sincere,\u00a0\u201cradical urge for bloodshed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashraf\u00a0Al\u00a0Safoo, 41, already has served more than seven years behind bars since prosecutors filed charges against him in 2018. His attorney sought a sentence of time-served, arguing he\u2019s caused no trouble in jail and basically amounted to a \u201ckeyboard warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n

But U.S. District Judge John\u00a0Blakey\u00a0said Al Safoo\u2019s crimes went beyond words \u2014 \u201cit was material support for the murder and destruction of other human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile you did not pull a trigger or detonate a bomb or behead someone with your own hand, by your own knife, you engaged in a course of conduct that facilitated and rooted them on,\u201d Blakey told Al Safoo while handing down the sentence.<\/p>\n

In a bench trial last year, Blakey convicted\u00a0Al Safoo of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, among other crimes.<\/p>\n

Before learning his fate, Al Safoo told the judge he\u2019d fled Iraq with his family as a teenager before he could be enlisted in Saddam Hussein\u2019s\u00a0military. He said he\u2019s betrayed the United States, the country that gave him a home, and cries when he receives photos of his children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reap what I sow,\u201d Al Safoo repeatedly told Blakey.<\/p>\n

The sentence is among the stiffest in recent memory to be handed down in a terrorism case at Chicago\u2019s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ashraf Al Safoo, 41, already has served more than seven years behind bars since prosecutors filed charges against him in 2018. He received a 25-year sentence Thursday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Adel Daoud, who pressed the detonator on an inert car bomb outside\u00a0<\/b>a downtown bar in 2012, was sentenced in 2024 to\u00a027 years in prison<\/a>. Hasan\u00a0<\/b>Edmonds was sentenced in 2016 to\u00a030 years in prison<\/a>\u00a0for plotting a deadly attack on the Joliet Armory in the name of Islamic State terrorists.<\/p>\n

But just last fall, a judge\u00a0gave 12 years<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>to\u00a0<\/b>Xuanyu\u00a0<\/b>Harry\u00a0<\/b>Pang, a former Navy sailor\u00a0<\/b>who helped plan an attack on Naval Station Great Lakes as payback for the 2020 death of an Iranian military commander. Pang\u00a0<\/b>wound up cooperating with authorities.<\/p>\n

In a similar case to Al Safoo\u2019s, a judge in 2022\u00a0gave\u00a0<\/b>7 \u00bd years<\/a>\u00a0to Thomas\u00a0<\/b>Osadzinski\u00a0<\/b>for trying to aid the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria with a computer script.<\/p>\n

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas\u00a0Peabody\u00a0argued Al Safoo\u2019s \u201capparent bloodlust\u201d\u00a0led him to Blakey\u2019s courtroom. In a recent court memo,\u00a0the prosecutor explained that Al Safoo once helped\u00a0manage\u00a0Khattab\u00a0Media\u00a0Foundation, which operated principally on Telegram and\u00a0\u201cexisted exclusively to serve ISIS\u2019s media needs and directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al Safoo supported the Islamic State by working on ISIS campaigns and making ISIS media, creating threatening propaganda that promoted violence and terrorism, and hacking Twitter accounts to spread ISIS media, the prosecutor wrote.<\/p>\n

Al Safoo \u201creveled in the Las Vegas shooting\u201d\u00a0and used an email address containing\u00a0\u201ca perverse reference to James Foley, the American journalist publicly beheaded by the Islamic State in 2014,\u201d Peabody argued.<\/p>\n

Defense attorney James\u00a0Vanzant\u00a0stressed that Al Safoo has never been in legal trouble before and has spent years in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, without being disciplined.<\/p>\n

After Peabody pushed back on his characterization of Al Safoo as a \u201ckeyboard warrior,\u201d Vanzant compared Al Safoo to Daoud. The Hillside man tried to set off a 1,000-pound car bomb filled with fertilizer in the Loop with roughly 200 people nearby.<\/p>\n

It all turned out to be part of an undercover\u00a0federal\u00a0operation.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Vanzant on Thursday said Al Safoo \u201csat behind a computer and he wrote articles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can talk about how Mr. Safoo was a keyboard warrior all day,\u201d Vanzant told Blakey. \u201cIt\u2019s not the \u2018warrior\u2019 part that\u2019s important. It\u2019s the \u2018keyboard\u2019 part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Blakey made clear that Al Safoo\u2019s conduct\u00a0was not protected by the First Amendment. The judge told him, \u201cit\u2019s not about expressing dissatisfaction with the United States \u2014 Americans do that all the time, on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather, the judge told Al Safoo, \u201cyou were supporting and facilitating the infrastructure of a terrorist organization that was causing harm on a global scale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chicago Man Gets 25 Years for Serving as a \u2018Press Person\u2019 for the ISIS Terrorist Organization A federal judge on Thursday handed a 25-year prison sentence to a former Chicago\u00a0software\u00a0developer\u00a0who the feds say functioned as a \u201cpress person for the Islamic State\u201d\u00a0terrorist organization\u00a0and held a sincere,\u00a0\u201cradical urge for bloodshed.\u201d Ashraf\u00a0Al\u00a0Safoo, 41, already has served more … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-moslems-jihadis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116276,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116275\/revisions\/116276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}