IS Supporter Jailed For Bid To Spread Info On Poison Gas Attacks - Justice Dept.

A US citizen who sympathized with the Islamic State (banned in Russia) terrorist group has been jailed for 15 years for trying to circulate information on how to make poison gas for terror attacks, the Department of Justice said on Monday.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st August, 2018) A US citizen who sympathized with the Islamic State (banned in Russia) terrorist group has been jailed for 15 years for trying to circulate information on how to make poison gas for terror attacks, the Department of Justice said on Monday.

Marlonn Hicks, 31, of Crown Point, Indiana, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison for distributing information regarding the manufacture and use of explosives, with the intent that the information be used for and in furtherance of a crime of violence, the Justice Department said in a press release.

On June 21, 2016, nine days after the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Florida, Hicks sent an FBI source who he believed was an IS supporter two manuals on how to manufacture and use explosives and poisons and discussed with the source possible terror attacks, the release said.

Hicks made his motivation for the planned attacks clear, exclaiming that since the FBI and similar government personnel have shut the door now [on his ability to travel to IS-controlled territory and fight there] Im gonna open the door to hell for them, the release said.

According to the documents in the case, Hicks rapidly transformed from a vocal online supporter of the Islamic State, a designated foreign terrorist organization, to someone planning a terrorist act, the Justice Department said.