North Carolina man pleads guilty to trying to join Islamic State

A North Carolina man who tried to travel to Syria and join the extremist group Islamic State pleaded guilty Thursday to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Donald Ray Morgan, 44, of Rowan County was arrested Aug. 2 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after a May indictment accused him of being a felon who illegally possessed a firearm. He pleaded guilty to that charge on Thursday as well.

Starting in January 2014, Morgan knowingly tried to offer support and resources to Islamic State, attempting at least once to travel to Syria to join the group, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

He also used Facebook and Twitter to express support for the group and related violent activities, according to court documents. One of the tweets cited in court documents said: “Killing our enemies and beheadings are justified.”

“Today’s plea is a sad reminder that those who wish to aid foreign terrorist organizations can come from any community and from any background,” Ripley Rand, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, said in the statement.

Islamic State has carried out beheadings, crucifixions and mass shootings as it has taken control of parts of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic caliphate. Its tactics against other Muslims whom it considers heretics are so savage that Al Qaeda’s leaders disowned the group this year.

Prosecutors said in a court document that Morgan was convicted of a gun felony in 1997 and that in 2012, he sold an AK-47 and offered other firearms to an FBI source. The source notified the FBI in February 2014, the document said. He was indicted in May.

But by that point, Morgan had left the country, the document said: He and his Lebanese wife traveled this January to Beirut. His plan was to reach Syria and join Islamic State, it said.

Morgan tried in May to go to Syria by way of Turkey, but officials in Turkey stopped him and sent him back to Lebanon, prosecutors said. In the following months, according to court documents, he used Twitter to express allegiance to the leader of Islamic State, hope for martyrdom, support destroying Israel by “any methods” and voice his desire to leave Lebanon for Syria.

During the summer, NBC News interviewed Morgan in Beirut. He plainly laid out his intention to join Islamic State and acknowledged that based on U.S. officials’ definition, he was participating in terrorism.

He soon returned to the United States — NBC News said he was low on money — and was arrested.

Morgan faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the terrorism-related charge and up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the firearm charge, prosecutors said. He is to be sentenced Feb. 18.

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