Days after Charlotte-area ISIS sympathizer Justin Sullivan was sentenced to life for planning mass murder in support of the Islamic State terror group, a North Carolina-based terrorism expert says the FBI is investigating about 1,000 ISIS-related threats in all 50 states.
U.S. Attorney Jill Rose of Charlotte has confirmed that suspected ISIS sympathizers are being investigated in North Carolina while not disclosing the number, a “domestic-terrorism expert” told The Charlotte Observer that the state probes are among some 1,000 active FBI investigations.
After Sullivan’s conviction this week, Keri Farley, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge of North Carolina, was quoted as saying that while Sullivan’s arrest saved lives, “homegrown violent extremists” are becoming more difficult to deal with.
“Identifying a terrorist before an attack happens is one of the most difficult challenges we face,” she said at a press conference. “It’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack; it’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles. But that’s exactly what happened in this case.”
According to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, 126 people, mostly young men, have been arrested in the country over the last three years for ISIS-related acts or conspiracies.
While about 45 percent were arrested while trying to join ISIS fighters abroad, around 30 percent have been accused of being involved in plots to carry out attacks on U.S. soil, the program says, adding that 58 percent were charged in an operation involving an informant and/or an undercover agent.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar
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