A Tajik national who lived in Brooklyn on Wednesday was arrested and charged with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and to the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), possessing firearms and immigration fraud, according to federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York.
Mansuri Manuchekhri, of Sheepshead Bay, was accused of facilitating about $70,000 in payments to ISIS-affiliated individuals in Turkey and Syria, including to an individual who was later arrested by Turkish authorities for his alleged involvement in a January 2024 terrorist attack on a church in Istanbul for which ISIS-K publicly claimed responsibility, according to a press release.
The complaint further alleges that Manuchekhri, 33, possessed and used firearms and made frequent visits to shooting ranges even though he was prohibited from
doing so as an alien unlawfully in the United States. In February 2022, Manuchekhri recorded himself firing an assault rifle at a shooting range in New Jersey and sent the video to one of the ISIS-affiliated individuals in Turkey with the message, “Thank God, I am ready, brother.”
In court filings, federal officials said they were notified about Manuchekhri's alleged radicalized behavior by a close family member who called the New York State Terrorism Tips Hotline on August 2024.
