A Florida man who had pledged support to ISIS was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for uploading a video he believed would help the terrorist group make bombs, federal authorities said Thursday.
The man, Romeo Xavier Langhorne, 32, of St. Augustine, Florida, pleaded guilty in March 2021 to one count of providing material support to ISIS, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. The sentence, handed down in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, also includes an additional 15 years of supervised release, the statement said.
Prosecutors said that while in an ISIS online chat room in December 2018 and January 2019, Mr Langhorne expressed an interest in creating a video to enhance existing videos on the making and use of a deadly type of explosive.
In February 2019, Mr. Langhorne “began communicating” with an undercover FBI agent who posed as an ISIS representative, prosecutors said. He told the agent about his plans to make the video and sought help creating it, they said.
Mr. Langhorne told the agent that the video had to include a disclaimer that it was for educational purposes so it would not be taken down by ISPs, prosecutors said, but that its real purpose was to arm ISIS followers and others with knowledge of how to make explosives.
The FBI created the video – which involved the use of a chemically inactive formula that would not cause an explosion – and Mr. Langhorne uploaded it to a video-sharing website, prosecutors said. He was arrested in November 2019 in Roanoke, Virginia, where he was living at the time.
Mr. Langhorne’s lawyer, John Leombruno, declined to comment late Friday. In a sentencing memorandum filed June 27, Mr. Leombruno described his client as socially awkward and said he had various untreated mental health problems, including schizophrenia. Mr. Langhorne turned to the Internet to seek validation and acceptance, his lawyer said.
Mr Leombruno said his client had been targeted by the government for his “provocative comments and discussions on various social media platforms about the religion of Islam”.
“Acting undercover, they initiated conversations with Mr. Langhorne and instigated the production of a video informing people how to make” the explosive in question, Mr. Leombruno wrote.
“To ensure that the defendant would be prosecuted, the government produced the actual video,” he continued, adding that the agent “returned to Mr. Langhorne when the interaction and conversation between them cooled.”
Authorities said Mr. Langhorne came to the attention of law enforcement officials in 2014 when he posted pro-ISIS statements and images on his Facebook account, according to a criminal complaint filed in November 2019.
The complaint said Mr. Langhorne had since posted numerous other statements on social media demonstrating “ideological support” for the group, including a speech by Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US citizen believed to be a terrorist who was killed by a drone in September 2011 strike in Yemen.
Sherry E. Onks, an FBI agent in Jacksonville, said in the statement that the threat posed by Mr. Langhorne was “always very real” and that the authorities foiled his plan early, preventing a threat.
“We remain as vigilant as ever in our efforts to protect the public from others who support terrorist organizations,” she said.
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