Social media can make ISIS recruitment easy, expert says of Beavercreek man

Dayton — The 19-year-old Beavercreek man accused by federal authorities of attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization is an ideal recruit for ISIS, an associate professor of international studies said Thursday.

"They [ISIS] have a very effective rercuiting tool and it tends to hit younger men between 15 nd 30 years of age," said Glen Duerr, the associate professor at Cedarville University. "It's had a lot of success unfortunately." 

Authorities arrested Naser Almadaoji at the Columbus airport Wednesday, Benjamin Glassman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said Thursday. 

The young man had tickets to Kazakhstan, where authorities believe he was to be smuggled into Afghanistan to go join the ISIS Khorasan, the affiliate of ISIS in Afghanistan, Glassman said. 

Undercover agents said Almadaoji told them he wanted to bring down the United States. 

Duerr, in an interview with WHIO-TV’s Kate Bartley, said that more than likely, the young man would have been used on a suicide mission in the Middle East. 

"He could have killed U.S. service members or people attending markets or mosques in Pakistan or Afghanistan," the associate professor said. "The loss of life could have been tragic." 

According to theconversation.com, ISIS has been using "fantastical propaganda on social media that describes the Islamic State as a land that is full of happiness" to recruit supporters. 

ISIS has six instruments to improve its existence and strategic goals. One is Islamic utopia. The others: brutality, mercy, victimhood, war and belonging, Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), wrote in his report, Documenting the Virtual “Caliphate” (2015). 

ISIS develops its fantasy of Islamic State from seven themes, namely religion, economic activity, governance, justice, social life, expansion, and nature and landscapes, Winter wrote in his report. 

Duerr said social media make it easy for terrorist groups to target and radicalize Americans. U.S. law enforcement knows that, he said, and they are watching. 

The FBI had been tracking Almadaoji since he returned stateside from Egypt, Duerr said. 

The arrest is proof ISIS is not gone, he said, despite having lost as much as 98 percent of its territory including Raqqa, the onetime capital of the Islamic State.