Bruce Vielmetti, and Ashley Luthern

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Two Milwaukee men accused of plotting to travel overseas to join the Islamic State were charged Friday with terrorism-related crimes.

Jason Michael Ludke and Yosvany Padilla-Conde face charges of attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization after a series of online conversations with an undercover FBI employee in which they professed allegiance to the Islamic State, court records show.

The Milwaukee Joint Terrorism Task Force has been investigating the two men since September when Ludke, 35, said he wanted to join the terrorist group, and the task force then began probing Padilla-Conde's role in assisting or joining Ludke, the records say.

“Terrorism remains the FBI’s top priority in keeping Americans safe," said Justin Tolomeo, special agent in charge of the FBI's Milwaukee division, in a news release. "The arrest of these two individuals from Wisconsin underscores how the real threat of terrorism can occur anywhere at any time."

According to the federal criminal complaint:

In September, an FBI undercover employee received a friend request from Ludke. When the FBI employee asked where Ludke was, he said he was in the United States but wanted to make "hijra" (migration) away from the "darul kufr" (land of the infidel).

During a conversation later that month, Ludke told the FBI employee he was making plans to come "there" but because he had a criminal past, he was traveling to Mexico, where he believed he could obtain a passport. In a voice chat later that day, Ludke said he lives in Milwaukee with his "brother," converted to Islam in 2003 and he was working on his brother to join him.

The undercover FBI employee, apparently posing as a member of the Islamic State, asked Ludke to wait for further instructions before trying to leave the country so he or she could consult with a person who can help Ludke get into Raqqah, Syria, and then to Mosul, Iraq. Then Ludke uttered the Islamic creed, pledged allegiance to Islamic State's leader and said he wanted to live under Shariah law. The next day, Ludke sent a video professing his allegiance to Islamic State leaders.

On Oct. 1, Ludke emailed the FBI employee two photos of himself and one with his "brother" who was identified as Padilla-Conde. In another video clip sent by email, Padilla-Conde pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.

Four days later, Ludke told the FBI employee he was traveling to Texas, where he would meet a woman to marry before going to Mexico. Ludke and Padilla-Conde were arrested later that day near San Angelo, Texas.

Ludke was taken into custody on an outstanding warrant in Milwaukee, while Padilla-Conde was held on immigration-related issues. During interviews with FBI agents, Ludke said they left Wisconsin because they couldn't pay their rent. He feared being sent back to jail, while Padilla-Conde feared being deported. Ludke said he cut off his ankle GPS monitoring device — apparently stemming from a prior court case — before they left. Padilla-Conde said he planned to abandon Ludke once they reached Mexico.

Ludke also is known as Muhammad Nassir, Muhammad Abdun Naasir Al-Hannafi and Abuz Sayyaf. Padilla-Conde also uses the aliases Saadiq Ibn Abbas and Saadiq Padilla.

Court records show Ludke has been in prison or on supervision since 1998, when he was convicted of burglary and car theft in Brown County and sentenced to seven years probation and a suspended prison term of five years.

In 2002, he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a child and sentenced to four years in prison plus four years of supervision. The supervision was revoked in August 2009.

While in the Brown County Jail in the summer of 2009, Ludke sent a series of letters to a federal judge in Green Bay. He signed them, and the jail was the return address.

The letters included threats such as Ludke would kill the judge and bomb the courthouse if the judge didn’t “give up your post of kufr rule and be under Islamic treaty.”

A month earlier, in an interview at the jail, Ludke had told an FBI agent that he planned to renounce his U.S. citizenship, become a Muslim and join a Hezbollah group.

In May 2010, Ludke was sentenced to 32 months in prison on the federal threat convictions and another three years on supervised release. A filing in that case indicates Ludke was born and raised in Green Bay, spent time in foster care, dropped out of 10th grade and suffers from ADHD, bipolar disorder and depression.

At some point earlier this year, the federal government started a proceeding to revoke Ludke’s supervised release after he quit his job and failed to return to the Brown County work-release center and became a fugitive until his arrest in May.

At a June hearing, U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper denied the government’s motion to revoke Ludke’s supervised release. The specifics of his alleged violations of release conditions are under seal.