Story highlights Tairod Pugh was stopped in Turkey trying to cross the border to Syria in 2015

Pugh was convicted by a federal jury in 2016 of trying to give material support to ISIS

(CNN) A US Air Force veteran convicted for attempting to join ISIS was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

Tairod Pugh, 49, from New Jersey, was found guilty in 2016 on federal charges of trying to give material support to ISIS and of obstruction of justice, according to the US Justice Department indictment.

"The defendant turned his back on his country, and the military he once served, to attempt to join a brutally violent terrorist organization committed to the slaughter of innocent people throughout the world," Acting United States Attorney Bridget Rohde said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Tairod Pugh

Prosecutors had presented evidence that the former aircraft mechanic was traveling from Egypt to Turkey in January 2015. Investigators say Pugh was carrying a laptop computer and four USB drives that he had stripped of their plastic casings in an effort to destroy their contents and thereby make them unavailable to investigators. He was denied entry and Turkish authorities returned him to Egypt.

Foreign government officials quickly deported Pugh to the United States, where the FBI closely monitored him, relying in part on a covert undercover employee who encountered Pugh at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the Justice Department.

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