
Hasan Edmonds (born 1993) was a Specialist in the Illinois National Guard who was arrested on 26 March 2015 for planning to fight in the Syrian Civil War for the Islamic State.
Biography[]
Hasan Edmonds was born in 1993 in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and he joined the Illinois National Guard. Edmonds rose to the rank of Specialist by 2014, when he decided to join the Islamic State. An undercover FBI agent posing as a fighter from the United States in ISIS friended him on Facebook, and Edmonds sent him private messages, indicating that he wanted to join his "true brothers" and leave the American "kaffir" army. His cousin Jonas Edmonds also planned to join the Islamic State, and Jonas attempted to get travel accomodations for Mosul, the second-largest city of Iraq that was also a major IS city. He asked the informant why Americans did not take the Egypt route to join IS, because so many jihadists were caught taking the Turkey route. Edmonds also told the informant that if he was not allowed to travel outside of the country, he would carry out attacks similar to the Charlie Hebdo Massacre of France in January 2015 with his cousin while inside the United States. On 25 March, he booked airline plans to leave Chicago and arrive in Cairo, Egypt on Thursday, March 26. However, he was arrested at the airport before he could catch his flight, and he was put on trial for planning to join a terrorist group and attack the United States.