Moments after her teenage son pleaded not guilty to charges he plotted to join the Islamic State, Zarine Khan delivered a tearful but stern message Tuesday for her son's alleged recruiters.
Her hands trembling as her husband stood by her side, the soft-spoken Bolingbrook homemaker and mother of four blasted the terrorist group and its self-proclaimed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for the "brainwashing and recruiting of children through the use of social media and the Internet."
"We have a message for ISIS, Mr. Baghdadi and his fellow social media recruiters," said Khan, looking up at the television news cameras with her voice shaking. "Leave our children alone!"
Even though her heartfelt words were in all likelihood vetted by her lawyers - the typewritten draft she read from even included a footnote - they offered a glimpse into a nightmare shared by a growing number of Muslim parents whose children succumb to the slick advertising efforts of Islamic State and other violent groups that want to groom future soldiers of jihad.
For the Khans, the shock has been magnified. Prosecutors have said their eldest son, Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, had persuaded his then-17-year-old sister and 16-year-old brother to fly to Turkey to ultimately join up with Islamic State.
There was no evidence that the parents knew about the plans. As the FBI questioned the siblings at O'Hare International Airport in October, agents showed up at the family home, and their mother thought her youngest son was asleep in his room, prosecutors have said.
On Tuesday, Zarine Khan, 41, and her husband, Shafi, 48, said they felt compelled to speak out after the "unspeakable acts of horror" that unfolded in Paris - including the deadly attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that was allegedly carried out by French citizens who had traveled to Yemen to be trained by al-Qaida.
"The venom spewed by these groups and the violence committed by them find no support in the Quran and are completely at odds with our Islamic faith," Khan told reporters. "We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms."
As the violence was unfolding in France last week, a federal grand jury returned the one-count indictment charging the Khans' eldest son with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization, which carries a maximum of 15 years in prison if he is convicted. His siblings, who were questioned at the airport but allowed to go home, have not been charged.
In a brief appearance Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Cox, Khan's attorney entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. Khan, being held in Kankakee County Jail, spoke only to tell the judge, "Good morning." His parents watched from the front row of the gallery.
Khan and his siblings were trying to board a flight to Vienna with a connection to Istanbul, where they planned to meet with a contact who would take them to Islamic State locations in Iraq or Syria, prosecutors have said. Khan allegedly told agents he expected his position to be "some type of public service, a police force, humanitarian work or a combat role," according to prosecutors.
While the siblings were being questioned at the airport, agents found pro-Islamic State materials as well as letters the teens were believed to have written imploring their parents not to go to the authorities, according to prosecutors.
The handwritten letters, which were publicly released during a detention hearing for Khan in November, expressed disdain for their American lives and explained why they felt compelled to join Islamic State, despite the fact it meant abandoning their close-knit family, prosecutors said.
Khan expressed hope in his letter that the family would someday be reunited in the Islamic caliphate.
"True, it is getting bombed, but let us not forget that we didn't come to this world for comfort," Khan wrote. "I learned this from my parents."
Khan's arrest came amid growing concerns by U.S. counterterrorism officials over radicalized Americans traveling overseas to join Islamic State. The group has killed thousands while taking over swaths of Syria and Iraq and has released a series of chilling videos showing the beheadings of Americans and other captives.
In October, FBI Director James Comey said about a dozen Americans were believed to be fighting in Syria. He described Islamic State as the most sophisticated group he'd seen in using its media presence to recruit young people to join its ranks for training.
Analysts say that to recruit fighters, raise money and instill fear in enemies, media-savvy militants in Iraq and Syria have vastly honed their social media skills, posting graphic photos of executions, slick recruitment videos on Facebook and Twitter, and even allowing fighters in the field to answer questions from supporters in anonymous online chat rooms.
The tech friendliness of Islamic State seems light-years ahead of the propaganda employed by al-Qaida just a decade ago when founder Osama bin Laden would rally followers with pious, videotaped sermons that had to be hand-delivered to Arab TV stations.
After the hearing Tuesday, Khan's lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, said there was "no question" that the siblings were actively recruited on the Internet. He cited a glossy propaganda magazine produced by Islamic State titled Dabiq that is available online, printed in several languages, including English, and aimed at recruiting jihadis through slick, romantic imagery of Islam restored to its past glory.
"It speaks entirely of coming to live in a caliphate, and how utopian it would be, which is what we think our client was doing," Durkin said. "We don't believe the evidence will be sufficient to show that he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. We believe he wanted to live in a caliphate, as misguided as that may be."
But prosecutors have alleged there was ample evidence in the materials found in the siblings' home that they were drawn to the darker, more radical aspects of Islamic State. In an unsigned letter left in his bedroom, Khan's younger brother expressed disdain for fellow Muslims who do not support waging jihad, calling them "diseased with hypocrisy."
"The evil of this country makes me sick," the brother wrote. "They tricked us Muslims and enticed us with an easy life and wealth."
Meanwhile, Khan's sister had expressed "twisted delight" after viewing an Islamic State propaganda video depicting beheadings, torture and other barbaric acts, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Hiller said. A search of her Twitter feed revealed a message about the video last year that was decorated with heart-shaped and smiley-face emoticons, he said.
Durkin said Khan had seen news reports of the terrorist attacks in Paris on TV from jail and was aware of what his mother intended to read to reporters. He would not say if Khan expressed any opinions about the statement.
"I don't care what he thinks. That's what the family thinks, and that's what he was taught," Durkin said.
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