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Maine doctor details sense of duty in alerting FBI to brother’s Islamic State ties
PORTLAND, Maine — When Jabbar Fazeli contacted his younger brother in the late summer of 2014, he realized the man he’d grown up with in southwest Iran was gone.
Adnan Fazeli had disappeared physically many months prior, after Muslim extremists convinced him to leave his new home in Maine to travel to Syria and, as Jabbar would later learn, to fight for the Islamic State. But as Jabbar pleaded with his brother to return and spare the man’s three children the pain of being associated with the terrorist group, Jabbar grasped that he wasn’t speaking to the Adnan he knew.
“He was a stranger talking to me,” Jabbar Fazeli recalled. “He was preaching to me while I was talking to him about family.”
It was like speaking to a member of a cult, he said. Adnan told him not to worry about the children because he planned to bring them to Syria.
“I said, ‘Over my dead body,’ basically. He made it clear then he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. At least my conscience is clear that I tried,” Jabbar said.
...
By that time, his conscience had already led him to the FBI, he said. Jabbar had contacted the authorities several months earlier, concerned by reports from family in Iran that Adnan appeared to be in Syria and associating with “bad guys,” he said.
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/08/17/news/state/maine-doctor-details-sense-of-duty-in-alerting-fbi-to-brothers-islamic-state-ties/
Adnan Fazeli had disappeared physically many months prior, after Muslim extremists convinced him to leave his new home in Maine to travel to Syria and, as Jabbar would later learn, to fight for the Islamic State. But as Jabbar pleaded with his brother to return and spare the man’s three children the pain of being associated with the terrorist group, Jabbar grasped that he wasn’t speaking to the Adnan he knew.
“He was a stranger talking to me,” Jabbar Fazeli recalled. “He was preaching to me while I was talking to him about family.”
It was like speaking to a member of a cult, he said. Adnan told him not to worry about the children because he planned to bring them to Syria.
“I said, ‘Over my dead body,’ basically. He made it clear then he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. At least my conscience is clear that I tried,” Jabbar said.
...
By that time, his conscience had already led him to the FBI, he said. Jabbar had contacted the authorities several months earlier, concerned by reports from family in Iran that Adnan appeared to be in Syria and associating with “bad guys,” he said.
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/08/17/news/state/maine-doctor-details-sense-of-duty-in-alerting-fbi-to-brothers-islamic-state-ties/
