A 31-year-old truck driver living in west suburban Villa Park has decided not to contest his removal to New York to face charges he raised money in 2015 to help send fighters from the U.S. to Islamic State fronts in Syria.
Dilshod Khusanov, a native of Uzbekistan, was arrested last month on a two-count indictment unsealed in Brooklyn charging him with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS and a second terrorist organization, Nusra Front.
Khusanov had asked U.S. Magistrate Judge David Weisman for more time to consult with an attorney before deciding how to proceed. His decision to waive his right to a hearing, announced during a brief appearance before Weisman on Wednesday, clears the way for him to be taken to Brooklyn by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Public records show Khusanov lived in Villa Park only a short time, with previous addresses listed in New York. Prosecutors said in a court filing that Khusanov had been working as a truck driver and “frequently travels across the East Coast.”
According to a release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, Khusanov was part of a cell of “like-minded individuals” seeking to aid Islamic State and Nusra Front in Syria. Four other members of the support group, as well as two people who allegedly tried to travel to Syria to join ISIS fighters, have already pleaded guilty to their roles in the conspiracy, according to prosecutors.
The investigation began when one of Khusanov’s co-conspirators, Abdurasul Juraboev, posted on an Uzbek-language website that he wished to martyr himself on U.S. soil, possibly by assassinating then-President Barack Obama, according to prosecutors. Another co-conspirator, Akhror Saidakhmetov, was arrested in February 2015 at Kennedy International Airport as he tried to travel to Turkey and then Syria “for the purpose of waging violent jihad on behalf of ISIS,” according to the charges.
Khusanov helped fund those efforts by providing his own money and promising to raise other funds to help pay Saidakhmetov’s travel expenses, prosecutors alleged. In the week before Saidakhmetov was scheduled to leave for Turkey, Khusanov transferred money into the personal bank account of another co-conspirator, Akmal Zakirov, that was earmarked for Saidakhmetov’s travel, according to prosecutors.
Both Juraboev and Saidakhmetov had been secretly recorded talking about a wide range of terrorist plots, according to the charges filed against them in New York.
Khusanov faces up to 15 years in prison on each count if convicted.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @jmetr22b
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