Kazakh citizen who planned to join terrorists in Syria gets 15 years in jail in U.S
ALMATY. Dec 21 (Interfax) - Kazakh citizen Akir Saidakhmetov was sentenced to 15 years in jail in New York for plotting to provide material support to the Islamic State (ISIL, banned in Russia) terrorist organization, the prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York said.
According to information posted in a statement on the prosecutors' official website, Saidakhmetov planned to travel to Syria to join ISIL militants and intended to kill law enforcement officials in the United States if he could not go there.
Saidakhmetov's plan was to become an ISIL militant, but if that did not happen, he was ready to begin terrorist actions in the streets of U.S. cities, attacking police officers and FBI agents in the U.S., William F. Sweeny Jr., deputy head of the New York field department of the FBI, was quoted as saying in the statement.
According to the statement, Saidakhmetov was detained on February 25, 2015 at the John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he was waiting for a flight to Turkey after receiving $1,600 from an accomplice to buy weapons in Syria.