NJ man arrested for trying to join ISIS

A 20-year-old New Jersey man was arrested on Monday and charged with seeking to join Islamic extremists in the Middle East.

According to a criminal complaint released on Monday, Nader Saadeh had shown allegiances to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for months, and had traveled to the Middle East intending to join the group earlier this year.

He appears to have been detained in Jordan since May.

{mosads}According to the Justice Department, Saadeh had planned to join the extremist group along with three other men who were arrested in June: his 23-year-old brother, Alaa Saadeh; a friend, Samuel Topaz, 21; and an unnamed 20-year-old.

The unnamed man told officials in June that he had pledged allegiance to become a “full-fledged” member of ISIS and that Saadeh had made plans to join the group from Jordan.

Saadeh kept tabs on ISIS on the Internet, the department said, and watched propaganda videos and speeches supporting the group before departing. He had also expressed support for the group’s burning of a Jordanian pilot and of the massacre at the French satiric newspaper Charlie Hebdo earlier this year.

Saadeh is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Jordan.

People close to him had tried repeatedly to prevent him from joining the group, the government said, but those efforts appear to have been fruitless.

ISIS is “slaughtering our people in Syria,” one person told Saadeh in an email in April, in an effort to have him renounce the group. “Believe me, my dear, the time of jihad is not with those people.”

The charges against Saadeh carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The arrest highlights federal officials’ fears that an growing number of Americans are being radicalized online through YouTube videos and Twitter accounts by extremist adherents. In response, officials have pledged to track such activity more aggressively.