HUNTSVILLE – Earlier this week, a one-count information was filed charging Aziz Ihab Sayyed, 23, of Huntsville, Alabama, with attempting to provide services and personnel, namely himself, to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization. Sayyed pleaded guilty Thursday.

Assistant Attorney General for National [...]]]>

Aziz Ihab Sayyed

HUNTSVILLE – Earlier this week, a one-count information was filed charging Aziz Ihab Sayyed, 23, of Huntsville, Alabama, with attempting to provide services and personnel, namely himself, to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization. Sayyed pleaded guilty Thursday.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town for the Northern District of Alabama and Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. of the FBI’s Birmingham Field Office made the announcement. The guilty plea was accepted by U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon.

Sayyed acknowledged that he bought bomb-building ingredients last year, stated his aspirations to conduct ISIS-inspired attacks on police stations and Redstone Arsenal, and attempted to form a cell to conduct violent acts within the United States. Sayyed admitted knowing that ISIS is a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Between January and June of 2017 in Madison County, Sayyed, a U.S. citizen, obtained and viewed ISIS propaganda videos depicting ISIS forces committing bombings, executions by gunshot and beheading, and other violent acts, according to the court documents. Sayyed shared the videos and expressed his support for ISIS and for ISIS terrorist attacks around the world.

Sayyed researched and learned how to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a highly volatile and extremely dangerous explosive material, purchased the necessary ingredients for the explosive, and professed his aspiration to use TATP in an explosive belt and/or a car bomb, according to the plea agreement.

On June 13, 2017, Sayyed met with an individual he understood to be an ISIS member. The person was in fact an undercover employee (UCE) for the FBI. Sayyed and the UCE discussed the danger of TATP, ISIS’s preference for the use of certain explosives, and Sayyed’s desire to assist ISIS, according to the plea agreement. In that meeting, Sayyed offered himself as personnel to the UCE, believing that the UCE was an ISIS member.

Sayyed’s plea agreement stipulates a 15-year prison sentence.

The FBI investigated the case in conjunction with the Huntsville Police Department and the Madison County District Attorney’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Henry Cornelius and Davis Barlow of the Northern District of Alabama are prosecuting this case with the assistance of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

BIRMINGHAM – A federal judge on recently sentenced a Birmingham man to 10 years in prison on separate counts of being a convicted felon in possession of firearms, including a 2016 incident in which police recovered 31 firearms after he barricaded himself and three other people inside a house to avoid arrest.

U.S. Attorney [...]]]>

BIRMINGHAM – A federal judge on recently sentenced a Birmingham man to 10 years in prison on separate counts of being a convicted felon in possession of firearms, including a 2016 incident in which police recovered 31 firearms after he barricaded himself and three other people inside a house to avoid arrest.

U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives announced the sentence.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn sentenced WILLIE LEE COOKS, 46, for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm on April 4, 2016, and multiple firearms on August 30, 2016.

“Cooks was a threat to the community, to his victims, and to law enforcement,” Town said. “Violent felons who possess firearms will not get diversion. They will not get probation. They will get a cell in the Bureau of Prisons.”

Birmingham Police stopped Cooks on April 4, 2016, for driving a vehicle without a license plate and arrested him on an outstanding felony warrant after seeing a Glock 9mm pistol on the floorboard, according to Cook’s plea agreement. The pistol was loaded with 31 rounds of ammunition in an extended magazine. Cooks had several prior felony convictions at that time, according to his plea agreement.

On Aug. 30, 2016, the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency task force approached Cooks’ Birmingham residence to arrest him on a warrant, and Cooks barricaded himself and others in the house, according to his plea agreement. A Birmingham Police SWAT team was called to the scene and tear gas was deployed to get the occupants out of the house after negotiations for Cooks’ surrender failed, according to the plea agreement.

Police subsequently found the 31 firearms hidden in a crawl space under the house.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorney L. James Weil Jr. prosecuted.