Foreign Affairs

Iranian Refugee Scores Ticket To America, Goes Back And Dies Fighting For ISIS

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Adam Fazeli fled Iran in 2008 because of religious persecution and ended up in Maine, before self-radicalizing and going back to the Middle East to join ISIS, the Portland Press Herald reports.

Fazeli died on the Syrian-Lebanese border in 2015, after spending two years fighting with ISIS on the front-lines. Fazeli came to the U.S. in 2009, and reportedly did not adapt well to American life. Despite fleeing Iran for religious persecution, he was nonsensically upset the U.S. had done nothing to help Iran’s Sunni minority.

Fazeli channeled his anger into online ISIS propaganda videos, and converted to Sunni Wahabism. Wahabism is the most extremist form of Sunni Islam. Fazeli grew a long beard, and began to speak openly against the U.S. in public.” Fazeli started holding occasional religious meetings at his home in Freeport,” court documents in the U.S. District Court in Portland reveal.

The Portland Press Herald discovered Fazeli, his wife and three children, were evicted from their apartment in July 2012. Intermittently he had fights with his wife, and once spent a week living in the auto garage where he worked. As the year went on he exhibited increasingly radical behavior, eventually depositing $14,500 in the bank account of his employer.

Without any notice to his family, Fazeli purchased a round-trip ticket with his employers debit card to Frankfurt, Germany and departed on August 13, 2013. Fazeli’s family learned of his departure when called them from Turkey, right before he entered ISIS territory. Fazeli’s family immediately informed the FBI of his departure, and kept the Bureau apprised of his regular Skype conversations.

Fazeli reportedly bragged that he and his fellow terrorists could kill 1000 enemy fighters for every 10 ISIS fighters killed. Fazeli’s family notified the FBI that he had been killed when his ISIS unit assaulted a Lebanese christian town near the Syrian border.

Fazeli’s Professor at the University of Southern Maine told ThePPH he was shocked to learn of Fazeli’s radicalization because he he reportedly “praised this society for its openness.”

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