An American accused of conspiring to aid the militant group Islamic State was ordered by a New York judge to be held without bail after he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport earlier this month, according to the New York Daily News.<\/p>\n
Donald Ray Morgan was arrested by FBI agents on August 2 at Kennedy Airport when he returned to the United States following an eight-month stay in Lebanon where his wife lives, the\u00a0Daily News<\/a>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n Morgan was allegedly attempting to broker deals for military-style weapons and ammunition in his home state of North Carolina. He was indicted for possessing a firearm as a felon since he has a previous conviction in North Carolina for firing a gun.<\/p>\n Yet officials also cited concern over his aggressive rants on Twitter under the name\u00a0\u201cAbu Omar Al Amreeki\u201d<\/em>\u00a0during his time in the Middle East.<\/p>\n At a bail hearing last week, assistant Brooklyn US Attorney Nadia Moore painted Morgan as too dangerous to return to North Carolina.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible that he traffics in guns to people in this organization (Islamic State),\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Moore said in Brooklyn Federal Court before Magistrate Ramon Reyes. Islamic State is also known as ISIS, or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n Morgan – who referred to himself as a mujahideen, or jihadist fighter – allegedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi on Twitter. His sentiments on the social media site signaled that he may have been preparing to fight with Islamic militants in Syria, Iraq, or possibly in the US, law enforcement officials worried.<\/p>\n There was no evidence of Morgan\u2019s membership with Islamic State nor that he offered material support to the militant group, federal defender Peter Kirchheimer said.<\/p>\n Yet Judge Reyes said the tweets\u00a0\u201cclearly implied to me that he is trying to go to Syria or Iraq as the next step and trying to be actively engaged.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Islamic State is an Al-Qaeda splinter group that has rampaged\u00a0through Iraq<\/a>\u00a0in recent months, capturing large swaths of the western and northern parts of the nation. The group was known to have fought against Bashar Assad’s government in Syria before seeking gains across the border in Iraq.<\/p>\n The Iraqi government has been next to powerless against the extremist group’s advances. In recent days, the United States has\u00a0authorized<\/a>\u00a0and conducted airdrops of humanitarian supplies to\u00a0minorities<\/a>in Kurdistan fleeing the violence as well as\u00a0airstrikes<\/a>\u00a0against Islamic State positions in northern Iraq.<\/p>\n The Islamic State wants to create a medieval-style caliphate across Iraq and Syria stretching to the Mediterranean. It recently tried to extend its bloody campaign to\u00a0Lebanon<\/a>, but was beaten back by the Lebanese army.<\/p>\n This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An American accused of conspiring to aid the militant group Islamic State was ordered by a New York judge to be held without bail after he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport earlier this month, according to the New York Daily News. Donald Ray Morgan was arrested by FBI agents on August 2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-135953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-human-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}