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Keys Man Convicted On Two Counts Of Trying To Help Terrorists

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Harlem Suarez, who was found guilty, could be sentenced to life in prison.

A federal jury deliberated for just over an hour Tuesday before convicting a 25-year-old Key West man on two terror-related charges.

Harlem Suarez, 25, was found guilty of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The case started in April 2015 when the FBI received a report about a Facebook user who was attempting to recruit people to join ISIS, the terrorist group. That Facebook user was Suarez, then 23 and living with his parents in their apartment on Stock Island.

The FBI launched an undercover operation and used confidential informants and FBI agents calling themselves "Mohammed," "Sharif" and "Omar." They communicated with Suarez by text and phone. And Suarez and one of the operatives met at a motel in Homestead and made a purported recruitment video for ISIS.

Months later, Suarez supplied $100, two boxes of galvanized nails and a backpack with the intention of making a bomb. A little more than a week later, an undercover agent met with Suarez and gave him the purported bomb. Suarez was then immediately arrested.

On Monday, Suarez took the stand and said he only went along with the plan because he was scared of the undercover operatives — because he thought they were connected to ISIS and that Mohammed knew where he lived.

That's why Suarez repeatedly ducked their phone calls and text messages and told them he didn't have enough money for a bomb when actually he had $4,000 in a bank account, he said.

"I felt I was trying to put some distance and it wasn't working and mentally I felt threatened," Suarez said. "I was trying to find a way to get away from them."

In his closing argument, attorney Richard Della Fera said that Suarez was "the victim of entrapment, plain and simple" and that the FBI could have stopped the investigation and talked to Suarez and his parents.

"They knew that they had a slow, naive kid who had no real connections to ISIS," Della Ferra said. "He was dragged along by these undercover agents."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Gilbert said the undercover operation did not constitute entrapment and that Suarez was an enthusiastic participant in the backpack bomb plan.

When Suarez accepted what he thought was the backpack bomb, "he's excited. He's ready to go," Gilbert said. "He's ready to let everybody know that ISIS was here in America, that ISIS was right here in Key West."

Sentencing is set for April 18 in front of U.S. District Judge José Martinez. Suarez faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Nancy Klingener was WLRN's Florida Keys reporter until July 2022.
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