Rahatul Ashikim Khan, 23, was detained on Wednesday for ‘conspiring to provide material support to terrorists’, Reuters said quoting US prosecutors.
Khan, born in Chittagong, was arrested from his Round Rock residence in an Austin suburb, according to court documents.
A student at University of Texas-Austin, he became a US citizen in 2002.
He reportedly said his brain ‘starts bleeding’ when he saw ‘weak Bengalis’ who had ‘no love for jihad’ and ‘no love to shed blood’.
Khan appeared before a US magistrate judge in Austin on Wednesday where the charges were levelled against him, reported the Austin American-Statesman.
Quoting the criminal complaint, it said the authorities alleged Khan referred to himself as a ‘jihadi’.
The report said he faced up to 15 years in federal prison and a maximum $250,000 fine if convicted.
His next scheduled hearing is set for Friday local time in Austin.
Khan allegedly wanted to join Somalia-based al Qaeda-linked terror group al-Shabab, abcnews reported citing court documents.
Rahatul Ashikim Khan. Photo: Austin Police Department
According to Austin American-Statesman, Khan had been working with others through an online chatroom between March 2011 and January 2012 to spot and recruit potential terrorists in the United States.
One of the men he tried to enlist in 2011 to ‘maim and murder people outside the United States’ was a confidential informant, the complaint stated.
Khan “discussed guns, training, the war against Islam, his preparation for the Third World War, shooting and getting the youth interested in the knowledge of jihad — something that Khan stated had caused conflict with his parents because he had been snitched on by some kids,” the Statesman quoted the complaint.
He had introduced the informant to an unidentified co-conspirator, possibly in Florida, the abcnews report said. The person, in turn, attempted to recruit the informant to Somalia to engage in jihad.
The co-conspirator then introduced the informant to another person, also likely in Florida, who discussed how Khan could get to Somalia to join al-Shabab.
"This case is the culmination of a long-term investigation by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force made up of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in Central Texas,” Houston Chronicle quoted US Attorney Robert Pitman as saying in a Department of Justice press release.
Apart from Khan, one Michael Wolfe, 23, also known as ‘Faruq’, was arrested at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Tuesday before boarding a flight to Toronto, Canada, with Europe his intended destination, reported the Chronicle.
Wolfe, who had sought to aid extremist groups fighting in Syria, was charged in a separate federal criminal complaint over the similar charges like Khan.
According to the complaint against Wolfe, "he planned to travel to the Middle East to provide his services to radical groups engaged in armed conflict in Syria," Reuters quoted the prosecutors as saying.
The arrest affidavit alleged that Wolfe told a confidential informant in May 2014 that he and his wife were expecting a tax refund in the amount of $5,000.
Wolfe indicated his wife wanted to get a portion of the refund to her mother, and the rest of the refund would be for his travel to Syria, according to the affidavit.