Mohamed Bailor Jalloh , the former Virginia National Guardsman arrested last week on charges of plotting to provide material support to the Islamic State, was manipulated by a government informant, his siblings say.

Jalloh was also mischaracterized by the government, the family members added, with innocent or thoughtless words twisted to make the 26-year-old naturalized citizen, originally from Sierra Leone, sound like a budding terrorist. Jalloh faces up to 20 years in prison.

“He is just another Mohamed that got set up,” his brother Chernor Jalloh told The Intercept. “He sympathizes with the oppressed abroad. … The FBI used his love for those being oppressed against him by inciting him in all manners that they deemed fit.”

A criminal complaint unsealed last week and widely publicized revealed that Jalloh had been speaking for months with a government informant, who recorded conversations in which Jalloh seemed to support acts of violence. The informant solicited Jalloh’s help in procuring money and weapons that he said would be used in support of ISIS. At one point, Jalloh was provided with a mobile messaging application to help him send $500 to an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS member abroad.

After Jalloh attempted to purchase a rifle at a local gun store, he was placed under arrest.

The government affidavit against Jalloh alleges that he had been radicalized by watching the lectures of former al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki. But his family says that Jalloh was young and impressionable, and had been manipulated by his conversations with the government informant.