“A New York man was sentenced today [7/14/2023] to life in prison on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and five substantive counts of providing material support to ISIS in the forms of personnel, including himself, Australian citizen Jake Bilardi and others, as well as services, weapons, property and equipment, and false documentation and identification, all between January 2013 and June 2017, when the defendant was arrested in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to court documents, Mirsad Kandic, 41, of Brooklyn and Kosovo, was convicted by a federal jury in May 2022 following a three-week trial in Brooklyn. … Kandic was a prolific recruiter of foreign fighters for ISIS. He sent thousands of radicalized ISIS volunteer fighters from Western countries into ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.”
– Office of Public Affairs, US Department of Justice, “High-Level Member of ISIS Sentenced to Life in Prison for Material Support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization Resulting in Death,” justice.gov, July 14, 2023
Editor’s Note: According to most historians of the Islamic State (also referred to as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), “the group emerged out of al-Qaeda in Iraq as a response to the U.S. invasion in 2003.” See Hassan Hassan, “The True Origins of ISIS,” theatlantic.com, November 30, 2018, for more information.