North Carolina jihad murderer “began acting combatively after he converted to Islam in September 2014”

JUNE 30, 2017 4:40 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER7 COMMENTS

One might almost suspect there was a connection between Justin Sullivan becoming a Muslim and his becoming a murderer. After all, his holy book thrice says “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 9:5). Good thing we have learned imams such as Pope Francis and H. R. McMaster and Theresa May to explain to us that it’s really a cuddly Religion of Peace after all.

“Feds confirm ISIS investigations underway in NC,” by Michael Gordon, Charlotte Observer, June 29, 2017:

Shortly after Justin Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison for planning to commit mass murder in support of the Islamic State, U.S. Attorney Jill Rose of Charlotte confirmed that investigations of other suspected ISIS sympathizers continue in North Carolina.

A domestic-terrorism expert told the Observer this week that the North Carolina probes are among some 1,000 active FBI investigations into ISIS-related threats encompassing all 50 states.

One case involves a 29-year-old Waxhaw man accused of lying to the FBI when he denied he told someone he planned to fly to Syria to fight with ISIS while helping others get there to do the same, according to a bill of indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charlotte.

Alexander Samuel Smith is accused of meeting with someone in Matthews in 2014 whom he thought was an ISIS representative but who was really an FBI confidential source, the indictment said. He offered lower-fare “buddy passes” he said he could get from his girlfriend, who worked at a U.S. airline at the time, court documents show. Smith is charged with two counts of making a false statement to an agency of the United States, according to the indictment.

Keri Farley, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge of North Carolina, said Sullivan’s arrest saved lives. But she added that “homegrown violent extremists” are becoming harder to stop.

“Identifying a terrorist before an attack happens is one of the most difficult challenges we face,” Farley said during a press conference with Rose after Sullivan’s sentencing. “It’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack; it’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles. But that’s exactly what happened in this case.”

Sullivan still faces a capital murder trial in Burke County in connection with the December 2014 shooting death of John Bailey Clark, an elderly recluse who lived near Sullivan’s parents in Morganton. Newly unsealed photographs from the crime scene show a path of blood leading from the bedroom of Clark’s dilapidated home on Rose Carswell Road and the shallow grave next to the house where his body was found.

According to federal documents, investigators say that after his arrest, Sullivan told a fellow jail inmate that he had killed his 74-year-old neighbor “for practice.”

Prosecutors say Sullivan hoped to kill at a far greater scale. With the help of his home computer and a Casio smartphone, Sullivan plotted directly with Junaid Hussain, a prominent ISIS leader, recruiter and social media expert who was killed during an August 2016 airstrike in Syria. Their goal: to kill up to hundreds of people at a concert or club in North Carolina or Virginia while filming the carnage as an ISIS propaganda tool.

Before sentencing Sullivan, U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger said the planned massacre was similar to the 2016 attack in Orlando, Fla., where a lone gunman killed 49 people.

Sullivan is among the 126 people arrested in the United States over the last three years for ISIS-related acts or conspiracies, according to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. As with Sullivan, 90 percent of those charged have been male. The average age is 27. Some 45 percent were arrested as they attempted to join ISIS fighters overseas. About 30 percent have been accused of plotting to carry out attacks on U.S. soil….

Interviewed after his son’s June 2015 arrest, Richie Sullivan said his son began acting combatively after he converted to Islam in September 2014. He began referring to his parents and other Americans as “you people,” according to FBI notes made public this week. After showing no interest in guns at any time in his life, the teenager announced on several occasions that he wanted to buy an assault rifle. At one point, Richie Sullivan suspected his son was building a pipe bomb, the FBI document says.

By now, Sullivan had been downloading ISIS execution videos. According to transcripts of his online conversations with an FBI undercover agent, Sullivan seethed at U.S. military reprisals against ISIS in Syria and elsewhere.

Richie Sullivan says he pressed his son to get a job and asked at one point if Justin had considered the military. According to the new document, his son replied, “And what, kill more of us?”