CHELSEA — A New Jersey teenager who is a former student of Xavier High School in New York was recently arrested for allegedly participating in a jihadist ring whose members exchanged encrypted messages online about committing acts of terror.
The suspect, Tomas Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, 19, was nabbed by federal agents at Newark Liberty Airport on Nov. 4 as he was about to board a flight to Turkey, where he planned to travel before making his way to Syria to train as an ISIS fighter, according to the office of Alina Habba, acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
Jimenez-Guzel, who lived with his parents in the upscale New Jersey suburb of Montclair, had sworn his allegiance to ISIS and took a selfie posing next to an ISIS flag, holding a knife, according to the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney.
Jimenez-Guzel was part of an online communication network with another man, Milo Sedarat, 19, also from Montclair. The network they used was also used by two other men who were arrested by the FBI on Oct. 31 and charged with plotting to commit a terrorist attack in Michigan on Halloween on behalf of ISIS, federal officials said.
The arrests of the two New Jersey men grew out of the investigation of the Michigan terror plot, federal officials said.
Jimenez-Guzel and Sedarat “pledged themselves to ISIS and were plotting acts of terrorism in our country,” Habba said in a statement.
Sedarat, like Jimenez-Guzel, planned to travel to Syria to train as an ISIS jihadist, the criminal complaint said.
Jimenez-Guzel, whose mother, Meral Guzel, is a United Nations diplomat in charge of a women’s entrepreneurial program, was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization.
RELATED: Xavier High School Holds Prayer Service To Remember Victims of Kristallnacht
Sedarat, who was arrested at his home on Nov. 4, was charged with transmitting violent antisemitic threats on the internet.
Jimenez-Guzel attended Xavier High School, a Jesuit school in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, for one year (the 2021-2022 academic year) as a freshman, Xavier President Jack Raslowsky said.
He started his sophomore year at Xavier but spent only a few days before transferring to a public high school in Montclair, where his family had moved. “He left on his own volition,” Raslowsky said. “He didn’t fail out. He wasn’t put out on disciplinary reasons.”
Raslowsky praised the work of the law enforcement officials who made the arrests but said he was confused as to why Jimenez-Guzel, who was baptized Catholic, would take such a dark turn.
“I don’t know that you could ever expect people to take this turn,” he said. “But there was no reason to believe he was anything beyond a regular kid.”
While at Xavier, Jimenez-Guzel played on the football team, said Raslowsky, who added that there was nothing about his brief stay at the school that was particularly memorable.
Jimenez-Guzel, like all Xavier freshmen, took part in Masses and religious retreats sponsored by the school.
Raslowsky, who said Jimenez-Guzel’s behavior is a “stark” contrast to what Xavier stands for, expressed sadness at the thought of Jimenez-Guzel’s embrace of jihadist ideology.
“The alleged behavior for which he was arrested stands in the starkest opposition to what the church stands for, stands in the starkest opposition for what Xavier stands for,” he said. “It stands in starkest opposition to what the Gospel proclaims. There is no love of neighbor; there’s no recognition of the inherent human dignity.”