Staff Reports
Orange County – The United States Attorney’s Office has issued a news release regarding an Orange County man who admitted that he intended to assist Al-Qai’da by traveling to Pakistan, where he would provide weapons training to members of the terrorist group.
Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen, 25, of Garden Grove, was sentenced on June 30 by United States District Judge, John F. Walter, who called the crime “a very serious offense that requires a correspondingly long sentence.”
Nguyen pled guilty late last year to one count of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Nguyen, who also used the name Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum, admitted that in late 2012 he travelled to Syria where he joined opposition forces. Using a social network site during a four month period he was in Syria, Nguyen told people that he was fighting against the Assad regime and that he had a “confirmed kill.” After he returned to the U.S., Nguyen told associates that he had offered to train Al-Qai’da forces in Syria, but his offer had been turned down.
Between August 3 and October 11 of 2013, Nguyen met with a man he thought was an Al-Qai’da recruiter, but who, in fact, was working with the FBI. According to a plea agreement filed in federal court, within the first few minutes of their meeting, Nguyen began questioning the man to determine if he was a fellow jihadist. Nguyen told the man about his exploits in Syria and said he wanted to return to jihad because “this was what he was born to do.” During their meetings, Nguyen – and the man he thought was a recruiter – discussed how Nguyen could travel to Pakistan under a fraudulently obtained United States passport. After Nguyen gave the purported recruiter a photo of himself and a passport application with bogus information, Nguyen agreed to travel to Pakistan, where he would train 30 Al-Qai’da fighters for five or six weeks to prepare them “for a guerilla warfare ambush attack on coalition forces” that would take place in late 2013, according to the plea agreement.
On October 1, with the intention to travel to Pakistan to begin training forces for the ambush, Nguyen purchased a plane ticket to travel from Mexico to Peshawar, Pakistan. On October 11, Nguyen went to a bus station in Santa Ana where he purchased a ticket to Mexico, and was arrested by FBI agents. When he was taken into custody, Nguyen had in his possession the false passport and a computer hard drive that contained “over 180 training videos on shooting firearms.”
Nguyen has been in federal custody since his arrest.
The case against Nguyen is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
