A 29 year old man from West Haven, Connecticut, has been sentenced to 92 months in prison and lifetime supervised release after attempting to travel to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State.
Ahmad Khalil Elshazly was sentenced on Monday by US District Judge Victor A. Bolden in the District of Connecticut. He had pleaded guilty in November 2022 to attempting to provide material support to Isis, a designated foreign terrorist organisation.
Court documents and statements made in court showed that from around September 2018 Elshazly, a US citizen, expressed a wish to travel to Syria to fight for the group. In numerous conversations online and in person he swore bay’at, or allegiance, to Isis and its then leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In October 2019, shortly after al-Baghdadi’s death, he sent a message pledging allegiance to the new leader. He wrote that he pledged his allegiance “to the Khilafah of the Muslims Abu Ibrahim Al Husseini Al Hashami Al Qurashi”.
Elshazly also created and ran a pro-Isis Discord server on which he posted hundreds of Isis and other extremist propaganda memes and videos.
On 14 December 2019 he paid 500 dollars to a person he believed was an Isis facilitator who would smuggle him out of the United States to Turkey. He thought this would allow him to meet an Isis member who would help him reach the group inside Syria.
The following day he was arrested after arriving in Stonington, Connecticut, where he expected to board a boat to begin the journey. He has been held in custody since his arrest.
While detained, Elshazly recorded numerous disciplinary offences. In August 2025 officers searched his cell and found a handwritten plan for a coordinated uprising at the facility. The document included diagrams of the housing unit, instructions for breaching secured areas and tactics for confronting the prison emergency response team.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force with assistance from the Stonington Police Department, the New Haven Police Department and the Connecticut State Police. It was prosecuted by Trial Attorney John Cella of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section and Assistant US Attorney Neeraj N. Patel for the District of Connecticut.
By A.Ikechukwu
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