A former U.S. soldier in Sterling, Virginia – who said he "just want(s) to live a good Muslim life" and die as a martyr – has been arrested and is being charged with scheming to help ISIS and plotting a Fort-Hood style attack on the U.S. military.

Mohamed Jalloh, 26, a former member of the Army National Guard and naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone, quit the service after he listened to speeches by senior al-Qaida recruiter and imam Anwar al-Awlaki, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern District of Virginia. He was arrested July 3 and made his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Jalloh is accused of attempting to stockpile weapons for an attack on U.S. soil committed in the name of ISIS during the month of Ramadan, which ended July 5.

The man told undercover FBI informants he's been a Muslim his whole life and he took a six-month trip to Africa, where he met with ISIS members in Nigeria and began communicating with them online. He called them "really good brothers," according to court documents.

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Jalloh told the informant he knew how to shoot guns and often thought about conducting an assault similar to the 2009 terror attack by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas.

As WND reported, Hasan screamed "Allahu Akbar," gunned down 14 people (including an unborn baby) and injured 30 others at the largest active-duty armored post in the U.S. Hasan wrote a letter to ISIS in 2014 and asked to become a "citizen soldier." He remains at Fort Leavenworth, where he is being held on the military's death row. Hasan contends he will "still be a martyr" if he's executed by the U.S. government.

Jalloh apparently wanted to be a Hasan copycat. He told an FBI informant he wanted to do "Nidal Hasan-type of things."

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"That's the kind of stuff I started thinking, you know," he said, according to the FBI. "I just want to live a good Muslim life and die as a (martyr)."

Jalloh also praised Muslim terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kuwait who murdered five U.S military service members in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 16, 2015. He called Abdulazeez "a very good man."

FBI agents witnessed Jalloh buying a Stag Arms SA1 5.56 caliber rifle on July 2 in northern Virginia.

“Unbeknownst to Jalloh, the rifle was rendered inoperable before he left the dealership with the weapon,” prosecutors said.

Jalloh also tried to buy guns in North Carolina in June and a Bushmaster AR-15 in Chantilly, Virginia, on July 1. He owns a Glock 19 9 mm handgun and told an informant he has a family member with access to AR-15s and AK-47s.

According to court documents, Jalloh said attacks executed in the name of ISIS are "100 percent the right thing":

"[S]ometimes you just have to take action … You can’t be thinking too much. … You have to pick a action and take it cuz time is not on your side … Since Khilafa (the Islamic caliphate) was announced, what June, 2014? It’s nearly two years now. Time flies. Before you know, it’s three, four, five years, and you’re still stuck in dunya (the earthly world), or in dar ul kufar (the land governed by non-believers) … find yourself … one the sidelines still, which is the problem."