The Shin Bet announces today that Khalil Adel Khalil, born in 1990 and a resident of the A-Tur neighborhood in Jerusalem, was arrested on March 1 for association with the Islamic State.
According to a Shin Bet statement, Khalil said during his interrogation that he worked as a medical staffer at the Eitanim Hospital and that already in August 2014 planned to travel to Syria with his friend Sami a-Aziz Abu Sneina and to join the Sunni extremist terror group in Syria.
The two men said they decided to join IS after watching recruitment videos online.
Khalil confessed that, before leaving Israel, he told his family and bosses he wanted a vacation in order to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Khalil and Abu Sneina, however, each bought a one-way-ticket to Turkey. From Istanbul they traveled to a safe house in the south of the country, where they met other IS recruits, including two other Israeli Arabs.
But Khalil resurfaced in Israel several weeks later and was arrested for interrogation by the Shin Bet. Today, an indictment was served at the Jerusalem District Court accusing the suspect of attempting to join an unlawful organization, attempting to contact foreign agents and traveling to illegal destinations.
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From the Liveblog of
Monday, March 30, 2015
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