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DC cop busted for allegedly trying to help the Islamic State

For the first time, a US police officer has been accused of allegedly seeking to help terrorists.
Un vagone della metro della capitale USA. (Foto di Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

A Washington, DC-area transit cop was arrested Wednesday on charges that he sought to aid the Islamic State, marking the first time an American law enforcement official has been arrested in connection with such a plot.

The officer, identified by the FBI as Nicholas Young, 36, is a veteran member of the DC Metro transit police. He had been under surveillance since 2010, when the FBI first questioned him in connection with a plot involving an acquaintance who was later charged with providing material support to IS.

According to an affidavit filed in a federal court in Virginia, Young had traveled twice to Libya in the months after the 2011 uprising, and told officials that he fought with rebels against the government of Muammar Ghadafi. He also expressed an interested in aiding the Islamic State, and in conversations with an FBI confidential informant, he offered advice on how the informant could evade law enforcement detection if he sought to travel to the Middle East. According to the affidavit, Young was arrested after he sent $245 worth of mobile messaging gift cards that he believed would be distributed to IS recruiters in Syria.

Young is the first American police officer to have been arrested for seeking to aid terrorists, according to Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, although not the first with any connection to law enforcement.

In 2015, an Illinois Army Guardsman was charged with attempting to aid the Islamic State, after being stopped at Chicago's Midway airport, allegedly en route to Syria.

Also last year, the 23-year old son of a Boston police officer was also arrested on terror-related charges. He later told investigators that the Islamic State was "doing a good thing" in Syria.