Suspected suburban jihadists shared ISIS-style selfies and joked about FBI reading group chat: feds

FIRST ON FOX: A hulking New Jersey 19-year-old accused of plotting to join the remnants of the Islamic State group in the wake of a thwarted terror attack on gay bars in Michigan posed in front of an ISIS flag and another alleged conspirator posed in jihadi fatigues in photos intercepted by federal agents from a group chat where the alleged plotters joked about being monitored by the FBI.

Both were already on the FBI's radar.

Tomas Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, 19, of Montclair, allegedly volunteered to conduct ISIS-style on-camera beheadings in a video call with suspected co-conspirators and hoped to have a Wikipedia page and documentary dedicated to his misdeeds. He had been interviewed by the FBI in 2024 after allegedly predicting a "newsworthy" terror attack would take place in Boston. 

Separately, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba identified the sixth suspect as Saed Ali Mirreh, a 19-year-old from Kent, Washington, who is accused of conspiracy to support a designated foreign terrorist organization. Mirreh was already on the FBI's radar after investigations in 2023 and 2024 for alleged ties to a juvenile terror suspect in Canada and discussing other ISIS attacks, a federal criminal complaint revealed.

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"The threat of terrorism is real," Habba said in a video posted to X Wednesday, linking the suspects to three suspected Halloween attack plotters in suburban Detroit, who were arrested with a stockpile of expensive firearms and ammunition on Friday.

Mirreh was the alleged "finance guy" accused of raising thousands of dollars to fund travel to Syria with the help of an online scammer identified only as "Bob," whom court documents placed in Sweden. 

She added that the two men allegedly planned to travel from Turkey to Syria and fight for ISIS.

Authorities arrested Mirreh at his Washington home just hours before he was scheduled to fly from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Istanbul, Turkey, according to a federal criminal complaint. Jimenez-Guzel was taken into custody at Newark Liberty International Airport after moving up his flight from Nov. 17 to Nov. 5.

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Federal authorities also arrested Montclair resident Milo Sedarat, the 21-year-old son of an Iranian expat poet who teaches college English in New York City. Agents in tactical gear and armored vehicles were seen outside his father's house on Tuesday.

The suspects appeared to be aware that their encrypted conversations might be monitored by the FBI, joking about it in text exchanges and sending selfies with their own faces blurred, court documents allege.

"Everyone has to be prepared to 'unalive' someone," Mirreh is alleged to have said at one point, using a stand-in phrase that social media users commonly insert instead of the word "kill" to get around content filters. 

In one exchange, Jimenez-Guzel allegedly proposed coming up with a fake plot to mislead authorities. In another, after the arrests of a group of suspected co-conspirators from Dearborn, Michigan, he allegedly told the group in a conference call, "There’s a lot of urgent stuff we need to speak about."

"Five of us are in the article and the feds… they’re gonna be looking for us soon," he allegedly said. "If we don’t leave, we are cooked."

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Jimenez-Guzel's mother is Meral Guzel, head of the U.N.'s Women's Entrepreneurship Accelerator, a program under the agency’s umbrella focused on women’s rights, according to the New York Post, which dubbed the two suspects "alleged yuppie jihadis."

Guzel's LinkedIn profile touts her work on "gender equality," "inclusive growth" and "competitive supply chains."

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Jimenez-Guzel is charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison as well as another $250,000 fine if convicted.

Sedarat is charged with two counts of transmitting a threat in interstate or foreign commerce, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Neither of them entered pleas at their initial appearances Wednesday afternoon.

Sedarat's father, Roger Sedarat, sat quietly in the back of the courtroom with a lawyer and another woman Wednesday as his son made his initial appearance. The elder Sedarat is an Iranian-American poet and English professor at Queens College, according to the school's website.

He did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him for comment.

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Three additional suspects, including two brothers, were arrested in Dearborn, another Detroit-area community, and court documents have also pointed to two more juvenile suspects.

They have been identified as Dearborn residents Majed Mahmoud, 20, Mohmed Ali, 20, and Ali's 19-year-old brother, Ayob Nasser.

They are accused of planning to stay in the U.S. to carry out the foiled Halloween plot.

Jimenez-Guzel, the Washington man and other alleged co-conspirators are accused of plotting to travel to Turkey, then Syria to join ISIS as fighters, Habba said.

Federal investigators intercepted group chat discussions in which the suspects allegedly codenamed the Halloween plot "pumpkin" and discussed traveling abroad to join ISIS, a terror group known for brutal executions, mass casualty terror attacks in the West and briefly occupying large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

The plot remains under investigation, and more arrests are possible.

Fox News' Maria Paronich contributed to this report.