A Missouri woman was recently sentenced in federal court for sending threats in the name of ISIS, via Twitter, to a number of people.
Safya Roe Yassin, 40, of Buffalo, Missouri, sent the threats to two FBI employees and two former members of the military and their families.
U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool sentenced Yassin to nine years in federal prison without the possibility of parole, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Feb. 28, Yassin pleaded guilty to two counts of transmitting threatening communications across state lines.
Buffalo Woman Sentenced for Twitter Threats to Promote Terrorism on Behalf of ISIS: A Buffalo, Missouri woman was… https://t.co/ZuCKINFUqE
— FBI Kansas City (@FBIKansasCity) June 8, 2018
She admitted that she used a series of Twitter accounts under the pseudonym “Muslimah,” and that she used them to post, or tweet, messages that supported ISIS.
Yassin also re-posted, or re-tweeted, messages that came from ISIS operatives residing abroad.
All of Yassin’s social media accounts showed dedicated support for ISIS and their mission, court records stated.
Yassin conversed directly with an ISIS operative overseas, identified as “Individual A,” and assisted ISIS in terrorizing the four named victims in the case.
The victims mentioned were selected solely based on their honorable service to the United States.
Yassin admitted that on Aug. 24, 2015, she re-tweeted a message that contained the phrase “Wanted to kill,” followed by the first and last name, status as an employee of the FBI, city of residence, zip code and phone number of Victim 1.
She then repeated the same “Wanted to kill” phrase, followed by the same personal information for Victim 2.
On Oct. 8, 2015, Yassin re-tweeted a message from Individual A that linked to a public document containing the name and home address of Victim 3, a U.S. service member, along with photos of his family, and the names of his wife and children.
Yassin added a message to the tweet that said: “Once again I leave these details online to cause havoc in his life & for my brothers and Al-Qaeda in the U.S. to eventually hunt him down & kill him.”
A link was also included that disclosed the name and home address of Victim 4, a former U.S. service member who had been the previous target of threats on Twitter by ISIS.
Individual A had threatened Victim 4 before with violence and called him ISIS’s “number one target.”
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian Casey and Abram McGull II. It was investigated by the FBI.
