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Muslim US Air Force veteran convicted of attempting to join Islamic State

Mar 10, 2016 6:23 pm By Robert Spencer

“They said he travelled to Turkey to find work, not to become a jihadist.” Yes, because everyone knows that Turkey is the place with the thriving job market these days. Anyway, here we have another convert to Islam who becomes a traitor. One might almost get the idea that “Islam hates us,” but that would be “Islamophobic.”

Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, one of the first U.S. defendants to face trial for supporting IS, is seen in a U.S. Attorney's Office image

“US Air Force veteran convicted of attempting to join Islamic State,” Reuters, March 9, 2016:

A US Air Force veteran was found guilty on Wednesday of attempting to join Islamic State, according to his lawyer.

Tairod Pugh, 48, was convicted after a week-long trial in Brooklyn federal court. The case is the first in more than 75 Islamic State-related prosecutions brought since 2014 by the US Department of Justice to reach a jury verdict.

Prosecutors said Pugh immersed himself in violent Islamic State propaganda for months before buying a one-way flight from his home in Egypt to Turkey, where he hoped to cross the Syrian border into territory controlled by the extremist group.

He was detained by Turkish authorities at an Istanbul airport and eventually flown to the United States to face terrorism charges.

Pugh’s defence lawyers argued that his only offence was to express “repugnant” views about Islamic State in Facebook posts and to watch dozens of the group’s slickly produced recruitment videos. They said he travelled to Turkey to find work, not to become a jihadist.

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Filed Under: American jihadis, converts to Islam, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: Tairod Pugh


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Comments

  1. Michael Casmer says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 7:04 pm

    But we shouldn’t ban Moslems from the military because it would be Moslemphobia. (sacr.)

    • mortimer says

      Mar 10, 2016 at 9:04 pm

      They should all be given lie detector tests. Example: “If you could, would you overthrow the US constitution and substitute Sharia law for it?” “Do you believe Sharia law supersedes the US constitution in authority?” “Is it your duty as a Muslim to implement Sharia law in America?” “Would you be able as a US soldier to shoot to kill a Muslim enemy combatant if you were given a lawful order by your officer?”

  2. Angemon says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 7:46 pm

    Pugh’s defence lawyers argued that his only offence was to express “repugnant” views about Islamic State in Facebook posts

    This is actually borderline illegal in places like Germany.

  3. Janeatte says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 8:07 pm

    Never ever trust Muslims to be in military,they are easy to betrayed their country imagine the Kafer countries

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Mar 10, 2016 at 9:26 pm

      This bloke is a *convert*. He wasn’t a Muslim when he *joined* the military. He *became* a Muslim, if I understand the article correctly, which calls him a “Veteran” (i.e. he is no longer serving), *after* being demobbed.

      Or he might have converted *while* he was in the military, since these days, if you’re in the military of any western – and many a non-western – nation you *do* come up against Muslims and Islam rather a lot. Tragically, some are seduced, and join the Enemy’s gang.

      • PRCS says

        Mar 10, 2016 at 11:35 pm

        Correcto mundo, dda.

        Pugh served as an Air Force avionics tech from 1986 to 1990; leaving the service 26 years ago.

        His service in the U.S. military, all those years ago, is absolutely IRRELEVANT to the issue at hand

        Once so-called journalists get a concept–especially bogus concepts like “radical Islam”–locked into their collective mindset, getting them to reexamine their thinking is almost impossible so long as that concept advances their predefined agenda.

  4. Oliver says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 8:40 pm

    If he was living in Egypt, why didn’t Turkey just return him there? And, since Turkey is cooperating with ISIS, why didn’t they just let him join?

    Hopefully, he ( and the other 74-in pending cases) will die- and quickly- while incarcerated.

  5. mortimer says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 9:10 pm

    US Air Force veteran Pugh will be in prison a long time. Muslim prisoners should have the option of early release as long as they can successfully complete a difficult deprogramming course involving the archeology, history, textual criticism and dual morality of Islam. The course would focus on all the barriers to belief in Islam. Once convinced that Islam is bunkum, they would be released after it was confirmed by lie detectors. Even if they managed to complete the course and still believe, they would no longer believe enough of it to pose a risk. A seriously doubting jihadist ceases to be a jihadist.

    • Vlad says

      Mar 11, 2016 at 2:51 pm

      Too expensive, use the “implant technology”!
      Implant technology involves copper clad led projectile into the remaining brain matter of the “implantee”.
      100% success rate every time and very cost effective.

  6. mortimer says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 9:49 pm

    Tairod Pugh, 48 … just another example of Donald Trump’s assertion: Islam hates us.

    The facts for the assertion keep piling up.

  7. gravenimage says

    Mar 10, 2016 at 10:50 pm

    Tairod Pugh–I wonder what his Muslim name is?

  8. Wakeup says

    Mar 11, 2016 at 6:14 am

    The support of islamic state in word or deed is in itself seditious/treasonous so it is no defence.

  9. Walter Sieruk says

    Mar 11, 2016 at 1:28 pm

    What a dangerous and delusional man this Muslim man must be. .That he is of such a twisted, warped, sick and deluded way of thinking that he actually might think of joining ISIS as something that Is “good.” Likewise, he must then also view that living a peaceful non-violent life here in America as something “evil.” The Bible informants about those who are of such a twisted, warped, sick an deluded mindset as to view Good as evil and evil as good.For Isaiah 2:20 reads “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” {N.K.J.V.]

  10. Ronald Wolf says

    Mar 12, 2016 at 4:47 am

    This asshole is a product of the newest threat this Israel hating, Iran supporting Islamophilic CAIR advised pc white house will not comment on, and is being made evident with the mob attack on Trump supporters for it is not Trump who is inciting the racism it is the Israel/Jew hating/ Farakhan supporting, Nation of Islam terror supporting, Black lives matter terror supporting faction that will no doubt aid ISIS in the near future that this sick traitor typifies.
    The biggest recruiting school for these pseudo Islamist terror fronts is our prisons and we permit it to go on under freedom of religion. When a tenet belief of a religion is sedition in my opinion it loses that protection. When black leaders such as Dr Cornel West compare murdering Palestinians to civil rights marchers I know without a doubt that this can be traced to a deep seated anti Semitism long evident in a large part of the black community.

    • Andrew H. says

      Mar 12, 2016 at 11:11 am

      He is black. Blacks join the BLM or Islam. The irony here is that more than any other group it was liberal Jews who helped blacks. Some of them got themselves killed for their anti-racism efforts. After 7 years of Obama, the KKK starts to look pretty attractive.

      • Oliver says

        Mar 12, 2016 at 2:45 pm

        Andrew H–one of the reasons–back in the 1960’s ( this was just 20-25 years after WW2 ended) there were many jews who survived the Nazi death camps- and remembered that some of the Dachau ” satellite camps” were liberated by blacks ( the US Army was segregated-until Harry Truman integrated the military during or around the time of the Korean War). There was a black armored/tank division called THE BLACK PANTHERS and a supply group ( that supplied General patton) called THE RED BALL EXPRESS. These people helped save lives of the prisoners, and some of the jewish support was to repay blacks. (They-the ones saved, and many of those who risked their lives for blacks) would be appalled at the black Anti-Semitism around today.

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