According to the Department of Justice, a federal jury in Tennessee convicted a Tennessee man of attempting to provide material support to ISIS.
Benjamin Carpenter, 31, of Knoxville, was found guilty of terrorism on Thursday after an eight-day trial. Carpenter, also known as Abu Hamza, faces up to 20 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release.
According to testimony produced at trial, Carpenter was the leader of Ahlut-Tawhid Publications, an international organisation of pro-ISIS supporters dedicated to translating, manufacturing, and distributing ISIS propaganda worldwide.
“For years, Carpenter, using his alias ‘Abu Hamza,’ published a large body of ISIS media, including his weekly newsletter ‘From Dabiq to Rome,’ a periodical that, among other things, celebrated the deaths of American soldiers, glorified suicide bomber, and called for open war against the United States and its Western allies,” the Department wrote in a press release.
“In 2020 and 2021, Carpenter contacted an individual he believed to be affiliated with ISIS’s central media bureau and provided translation services for a project intended to relaunch Al-Hayat Media Center, ISIS’s official foreign-language media arm,” the release continued.
Carpenter was detained on March 24, 2021, following a federal grand jury indictment accusing him of intending to provide material assistance and resources to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organisation.
Carpenter’s sentence will be handed down at a later date.
