It was a three-minute crime with a 30-year penalty, a prosecutor said Tuesday in the trial of a Brooklyn, N.Y. man accused of financing a terrorist operation.
Opening arguments began in the trial of Dilkhayot Kasimov, who is accused of providing $1,600 to a co-conspirator at an airport in 2015.
“Late on a night in February, 2015, that man drove to JFK in Queens,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Haggans told jurors in Brooklyn Federal Court. “The defendant was trying to find a man, a man who was trying to board a plane. He found the man. He handed him a stack of cash. That man intended to fly to Syria. He wanted to join ISIS.
“It is a crime to give money to a fighter in a terrorist organization,” Haggans said. “And that is why we are here today.”
Haggans said the trial will give jurors insight into how ISIS recruited fighters from all over the world, including the U.S.
Haggans said co-conspirator Akhror Saidakhmeto and his roommate wanted to join ISIS, and that Kasimov helped them.
Kasimo’s lawyer, Abraham Rubert-Schewel, asked jurors to keep an open mind.
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