Virginia man charged in FBI sting with supporting Islamic State goes on trial

[December 10, 2024]  By MATTHEW BARAKAT

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man accused of funneling tens of thousands of dollars to the Islamic State group was a lonely man looking for a wife and relentlessly targeted by FBI sting operations, a defense lawyer told jurors Monday, including one undercover operative who pretended to be a willing bride.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria heard opening statements in the terrorism trial of Mohammed Chhipa, 35, of Springfield, Virginia. Prosecutors say he met several times with an undercover FBI operative who gave him hundreds of dollars on multiple occasions in 2021 and 2022, earmarked for a Syrian woman and Islamic State member known as Umm Dujanah.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Andrew Dixon said Chhipa took the money on each occasion, converted it to Bitcoin and sent it to accounts in Turkey, destined for the Islamic State.

Dixon said Chhipa sent more than $74,000 in similar fashion to accounts in Turkey, collecting money from willing donors and funneling it to the Islamic State through Umm Dujanah. Chhipa was particularly interested in sending funds to help women from the Islamic State escape prison camps to which they had been sent after the terrorist group was routed from territory it held in Iraq and Syria, Dixon said.

Dixon said Chhipa was well aware that what he was doing was illegal, fleeing the country at one point, only to be forced back to the United States. At one point, he said while under surveillance, “I'm not sure why I'm not in prison.”

Chhipa's defense attorney, Zachary Deubler, said the FBI had closely scrutinized Chhipa for years, based largely on advocacy of extremist views on social media. But he said the FBI never came up with a reason to arrest him, even after searching his home in 2019 and finding a cache of Islamic State propaganda.

Deubler acknowledged that Chhipa left the country, through Latin America with an ultimate goal of getting to Egypt. The FBI met Chhipa when he returned to the U.S. at Dulles International Airport and questioned him about his activities but never arrested him.

Deubler said the government's entrapment efforts intensified, to include a fake bride at one point and a supposed Muslim marriage broker at another.

“He was a lonely, sad, inflated man who the government tried to set up,” Deubler said.

The trial began with several quirks. Chhipa appeared at trial in a green jumpsuit from the Alexandria jail, where he is being held. He said he did not want to wear civilian clothes, which are typically provided to defendants out of concern that jail outfits will prejudice the jury against a defendant.

After a morning break, Chhipa's family refused to stand when the clerk said “all rise” as the judge left the bench, and U.S. District Judge David Novak angrily told the family either to stand or be taken into custody. No arrests were made, even though several family members refused repeated directives from court security officers to stand.

Last year, after Chhipa's arrest, prosecutors said Chhipa considers himself to be married to Allison Fluke-Ekren, an American from Kansas who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty last year to organizing and leading the Khatiba Nusaybah, a battalion in the Islamic State in which roughly 100 women and girls learned how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts.

Prosecutors, though, say that the marriage was apparently conducted online and has no legal status in the U.S. They said Chhipa, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from India, has been trying to adopt Fluke-Ekren’s children.

The trial is expected to last about a week.

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