Muhyyee-Ud-Din Abdul-Rahman was a promising student and skilled wrestler with a college scholarship by the time he was 17 years old. But prosecutors say his path took a dark turn in early 2023 after he saw a video of a Syrian schoolhouse being bombed. <\/p>\n
A belief that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his regime were persecuting Muslims drove him to radicalization, prosecutors said. He reached out to extremist groups, they said, and tested out detonators more than a dozen times near his family\u2019s home in the Wynnefield section of the city.<\/p>\n
Abdul-Rahman, now 19, is charged with possessing or manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy, risking catastrophe, and related crimes. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. As his trial began Thursday, he made a heart sign to the rows of supporters who gathered in the courtroom. <\/p>\n
First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee Jr. told the jury in his opening statement that the teen turned to the internet to seek out guidance from Syrian extremist groups such as Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, or KTJ for short, fully set on eventually moving to Syria.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to become KTJ\u2019s bomb guy,\u201d the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n
The teen, he said, secured materials to make pressure-cooker bombs, pipe bombs, and improvised explosive devices from Lowe\u2019s, Dollar Tree, and Amazon. And he bought camouflage uniforms, knives, and magazine carriers, secured a passport, and made plans for an eventual trip to Syria, the prosecutor said. <\/p>\n
Abdul-Rahman sought manuals and instructions on how to build detonators and bombs, receiving instructions from ISIS on the messaging app Telegram, Listenbee told jurors. And the teen bought hydrochloric acid, a bomb-making ingredient, with his mother at Lowe\u2019s and admitted to testing so-called TATP bombs, also known as \u201cthe mother of Satan.\u201d<\/p>\n
The teen admired Osama bin Laden, had an ISIS banner as his WhatsApp profile photo, and twice tried to reach someone at the Syrian-Turkish border in an effort to find a way to reach KTJ strongholds 35 miles from the Turkish border, Listenbee said. The two calls, however, never went through. <\/p>\n
Abdul-Rahman\u2019s attorney, Donald Chisolm II, reminded the jury in his opening statement that his client was presumed innocent and that prosecutors had to prove their assertions that he was a sophisticated bomb maker at 17 years old. The lawyer suggested that the evidence in the case would fall short of that goal. <\/p>\n
Chisolm did not address why Abdul-Rahman might have communicated with extremist Instagram accounts or experimented with detonators and purchased tactical gear. He said he did not have to. <\/p>\n
In his brief statement, Chisholm asked the jurors to consider the teens they know in their own lives and how ineffectual they can be at even the simplest tasks.<\/p>\n
As for Abdul-Rahman\u2019s alleged actions, he said the mind of a 17-year-old can be \u201call over the place.\u201d <\/p>\n
The trial will resume Friday and is expected to end next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Muhyyee-Ud-Din Abdul-Rahman was a promising student and skilled wrestler with a college scholarship by the time he was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":219488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,119650],"class_list":{"0":"post-219487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa","18":"tag-west-philadelphia-teen-testing-explosives"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115188467947958624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}