The trial of the Kazakh-born U.S. citizen is the latest in a series of cases against people accused of leaving their homelands around the world to join the militants in combat, according to a statement on the U.S. Ministry of Justice website.
Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, a former New York stockbroker-turned-Islamic State group militant has been convicted of becoming a sniper and trainer for the extremist group during its brutal reign in Syria and Iraq.
The trial of the Kazakh-born U.S. citizen is the latest in a series of cases against people accused of leaving their homelands around the world to join the militants in combat, according to a statement on the U.S. Ministry of Justice website.
“Today’s verdict in an American courtroom is a victory for our system of justice” and against the Islamic State group, Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. Asainov’s lawyers had no immediate comment.
A one-time broker who doted on his toddler daughter, Asainov converted to Islam around 2009 and later quit his job and started watching radical sermons online, his ex-wife testified. He abruptly left his family in Brooklyn in December 2013 and made his way to Syria as IS stormed to power.
In a case built largely on Asainov’s own words in messaging apps, emails, recorded phone calls and an FBI interview, prosecutors said he fought in numerous battles and built a notable profile in IS by becoming a sniper and later an instructor of nearly 100 other long-range shooters.
“The evidence has shown that people died as a result of the defendant’s conduct. It is time to hold him accountable,” prosecutor Douglas Pravda told a Brooklyn federal court jury in a closing argument.
Asainov, 46, didn’t testify, telling the court he was “not part of this process.”
According to the report; his lawyers didn’t dispute that he went to Syria and was affiliated with the Islamic State group, but they argued that his accounts of his role were boasts that had no firsthand corroboration and didn’t prove anyone died because of his conduct.
“Nobody’s arguing to you that Mr. Asainov’s view of the world is not a very warped view,” defence attorney Sabrina Shroff said in her summation, asking the jury “not to confuse his views with what is needed to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt.
“There’s not a single piece of paper that ties Mr. Asainov to anything in the Islamic State that would tell you he, in fact, is the person he claims to be,” she said.
Jurors, whose identities were kept confidential, found Asainov guilty of offences that include providing and attempting to provide material support to what the U.S. designates a foreign terrorist organisation.
The jury also concluded that his actions caused at least one death, a finding that means he faces the potential of life in prison. His sentencing is set for June 7.
IS fighters seized chunks of Iraq and Syria in 2014, sweeping millions of people into a so-called caliphate ruled according to the group’s iron-fisted interpretation of Islamic law, enforced through massacres, beheadings, sexual slavery and other atrocities.
The group’s bloody campaign attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters; at least scores of them were U.S. citizens, according to a 2018 academic report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.