Thomas Gounley

TGOUNLEY@NEWS-LEADER.COM

When the FBI escorted Safya Roe Yassin out of her home near Buffalo, Missouri, last Thursday, it was the first time one neighbor had seen her in months. Another had never laid eyes on her before.

Jeffrey Melhorn said it was sometime in August or September when an older man, a middle-aged woman and two children moved into the home across from his on Chisholm Trail, just outside the city of 3,000.

Melhorn saw the man regularly and spoke to him a few times. But the woman and children remained indoors.

"That kind of thing strikes you as being a little odd, you know," Melhorn said.

Another nearby resident, who declined to give her name to a reporter, told the News-Leader a similar tale. When the FBI arrived last week, she took pictures of the scene through her blinds, surprised to see a woman she didn't know.

It was a bizarre situation — and that was before neighbors learned of the allegations that prompted the raid. The woman neighbors never saw, the federal government alleges, had acquired a degree of Internet notoriety for making statements in support of the group of militants that calls itself the Islamic State.

Upon Yassin's arrest, the Program on Extremism at George Washington University's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security referred to her as "a well known person in the ISIS Twitter scene."

Yassin, 38, is charged with the online communication of threats of violence against FBI agents. A criminal complaint prepared by the FBI to justify the charge indicates she came under the scrutiny of the agency in January 2015, after someone called the FBI concerned about a recent shift in her rhetoric.

The FBI began monitoring Yassin's posts on social media, and agents interviewed Yassin in Bolivar, where she was living at the time, in June. Later that month, the complainant who had contacted the FBI told agents he or she regretted that decision and that Yassin didn't pose a danger.

In its criminal complaint, the FBI quoted numerous social media posts allegedly written by Yassin that many would likely find to be disturbing. But the charge leveled against Yassin last week directly pertains to just one "retweet" — a term that describes the sharing of a Twitter post actually written by someone else.

The arrest of Yassin, and the allegations against her, highlight the role that social media, particularly Twitter, play in the spread of Islamic extremism — and the challenges social networks face in counteracting that.

A longtime Missouri resident, and a tip

Public records suggest Yassin, born in July 1977, has lived in southwest Missouri since about 2006, and that she spent time in California and the Kansas City area before that.

It's not immediately clear where she spent the early part of her life. An FBI spokeswoman said the agency isn't releasing information beyond what was included in the criminal complaint and grand jury indictment.

Melhorn and another neighbor interviewed by the News-Leader in Buffalo believe the man she lived with was her father, and that the two children were her own. It is difficult to find people who know Yassin, due to her apparently reclusive nature.

The FBI complaint doesn't mention whether Yassin attended religious services in the area. Contacted by the News-Leader, a representative of the Islamic Center of Springfield said he did not know her. He said he couldn't absolutely rule out that she was in contact with other members of the congregation or attended services at some point. But she was not well known if she did.

Yassin protested ahead of a Springfield school board meeting in 2012, when the board was discussing the construction of a new early childhood special education center, according to News-Leader coverage from the time. Yassin, who indicated she had a special needs child, argued in favor of such children attending traditional schools.

"Since we're already segregating them to a special building, how is that going to work when they get older?" Yassin said in 2012. "... I believe that inclusion is the best way."

Annette Brandenburg, a Greene County resident, told television station KY3 last week that she communicated with Yassin for several months after Yassin contacted her on Facebook about joining a support group for parents of children with autism. Brandenburg said she hadn't seen Yassin in more than a year and was shocked to learn of her arrest.

Brandenburg spoke warmly of Yassin, describing her as a caring person devoted to her children. Brandenburg said Yassin never spoke to her about Islam or extremism but was outspoken about other subjects.

"Chemtrails, vaccines, issues related to autism, Monsanto; I mean, whatever she got involved in or thought about, she expressed that very passionately," Brandenburg told KY3.

The unnamed complainant who called the FBI about Yassin in January 2015 stated that he or she had befriended Yassin on Facebook, according to court documents. The individual said Yassin introduced him or her to Islam and was "unexceptional in her teachings" in the early part of their relationship, a fact that prompted the individual to convert to Islam.

But at some point, according to the FBI, Yassin's tone began to change.

In the January 2015 call, the individual said "recently Yassin had become convinced that ISIL is going to save the world," the complaint says.

ISIL refers to a band of Islamic militants that, at various times, has referred to itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Islamic State. The group, which is not recognized by international communities as a state, controls a frequently shifting portion of the Middle East.

The individual told the FBI that Yassin directed him or her to divorce a non-Muslim spouse and to get rid of all dogs and non-Muslim friends, according to the FBI. But "the complainant stated that while Yassin's beliefs are disturbing, Yassin has not directly advocated violence to the complainant," the FBI wrote.

FBI starts to monitor accounts

The complainant provided the FBI with Twitter, Facebook and email accounts Yassin had used to communicate. In May, the FBI obtained information from Twitter that identified several other accounts on the social network associated with Yassin's alleged email, documents say. Each account's handle had some variation of the word "muslimah" — an Arabic term for a Muslim woman.

The FBI began monitoring those accounts. (The social media profiles referenced in the complaint appear to all be suspended or deleted. The document does not include screenshots, although some have been shared by outside groups like the GWU Program on Extremism).

In late May, according to the FBI, one account made posts referencing a planned protest in front of a Phoenix, Arizona mosque.

"They have courage now, but if a backpack was left at the scene w/nothing in it, you would have a stampede. lol.," one post read, court documents say.

On June 4, two FBI agents interviewed Yassin at her home along Highway 32 in Bolivar. Yassin acknowledged making the posts when agents showed her screenshots, according to the FBI, but said her intentions had been misunderstood.

Asked about pictures she posted of children with flags associated with the Islamic State, Yassin said it was a traditional Islamic flag that had been co-opted by the extremist group, the complaint says.

"She stated that she posted the pictures with happy emoticons because she thought the children were cute, rather than to signal her support for ISIL," the FBI wrote.

Yassin told the FBI she never made threats on social media, did not support Islamic militants and did not intend to travel to Iraq or Syria.

"She said she simply reports the news, and she advised she would be willing to answer any further questions," the FBI wrote of the encounter.

Later that month, the FBI again interviewed the person who first alerted them to Yassin. The individual said Yassin began talking about Islamic radicals in 2014 and said he or she "did not think Yassin had the desire or means to travel to Iraq or Syria in support of ISIL," according to the FBI.

The individual also said he or she regretted calling authorities and did not believe Yassin posed a danger. According to the FBI, the day prior, the individual told Yassin he or she wanted to stop communicating and Yassin said she knew that person was the one who "snitched" on her.

Extremism's online home

Counting Yassin, federal prosecutors have charged 80 people around the country for activity or crimes connected with the Islamic State. So far, 24 have been convicted, according to a running tally by The Washington Post.

Yassin stands out as a woman; cases involving men outnumber women by about 6 to 1, according to the Post. She's also older than most; the average age of charged individuals is 26.

In a December report, GWU's Program on Extremism wrote that "homegrown terrorists don't fit a single profile."

Some high-profile cases have involved individuals attempting to travel from the United States to join militants, which would appear to explain the FBI's inquiry into whether Yassin planned to leave. Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, 22, and his 19-year-old wife Jaelyn Delshaun Young seemed like typical university students until they were arrested at a small regional airport in Mississippi in August 2015 and charged with conspiring to provide support to terrorists.

Other cases have involved what the FBI says were plans for attacks in the United States. Fareed Mumuni, for example, is said by the agency to have been plotting to detonate a pressure-cooker bomb; the 21-year-old was arrested at home in New York in June.

The use of social media — particularly Twitter — has been a common thread among those charged.

The Program on Extremism said in its December report it had "identified some 300 American and/or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers active on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting with like-minded individuals."

Twitter allows users to post messages of up to 140 characters, along with images, similar to a status update on Facebook. One of its signature features is the "retweet," which lets users share a post written by another person so that one's own followers will see it as well. When a post is shared, the original writer benefits from a larger audience, a portion of which may choose to sign up to see future posts.

Twitter has been struggling to counteract the use of its service to spread extremist messaging. In a blog post earlier this month, the social network said that since mid-2015 it has "suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts."

But many suspended users quickly come back under a new alias. One of the accounts the FBI associated with Yassin commented on Twitter's move to suspend accounts in June.

"They're very proud of themselves (that they had to run it on media) they really felt they won some battle on the frontlines," the post read, according to the FBI. "Meanwhile, everyone is back within a few minutes."

Some have faulted Twitter for not doing enough. In the wake of Yassin's arrest, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi tweeted that she had reported one of Yassin's alleged accounts to Twitter.

"I received a response from Twitter, stating that they could not 'find a violation of our guidelines' in the account, despite the fact that account was calling for journalists (myself included) to be killed by IS sympathizers in the US for the crime of reporting the news," Callimachi wrote.

By Jan. 27, the FBI says, it had identified 97 Twitter accounts "likely being used by Yassin to post content in support of ISIL."

Among the tweets the agency highlighted:

July 14: "@TawheedNetwork How much time do you get for just 'wanting' to travel to Syria?"

Aug. 5: "The West thinks that caging Muslims will stop 'terrorism'...but they will be finding out soon, it only increases the attacks against them."

Aug. 12: "Anybody 'raiding' me will be shot on site"

According to one tweet archived by the Program on Extremism, on the December day that 14 people were killed in San Bernadino, California, one account associated with Yassin posted: "Munafiqeen are holding their breath right now, hoping it was not a Muslim who did mass shooting in USA, while I am hoping it was." Munafiqeen is an Arabic term for a religious hypocrite.

What led to February raid

Yassin was formally indicted Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Springfield.

The criminal complaint used to justify the charge against her runs 17 pages and references dozens of tweets. But the actual grand jury indictment is much shorter and only references one post — a retweet.

On Aug. 24, the @OOO1Muslimah Twitter account said to be operated by Yassin shared a post by Twitter user @ccybercaliphate.

The original tweet said "Wanted to kill," according to the FBI, and went on to list the full names, department, city, ZIP code and cellphone numbers of two FBI employees. Both employees met with law enforcement "to increase his/her residential security in response to the threat," according to the criminal complaint.

The felony charge Yassin faces does not deal directly with terrorism. Rather, the FBI alleges that she did knowingly "transmit in interstate and foreign commerce a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another." Conviction carries a sentence of up to five years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and/or three years supervised release.

The FBI appears to be citing Yassin's other alleged tweets in support of the Islamic State in order to establish that Yassin intended to communicate a threat with the Aug. 24 retweet. The reason that post was allegedly shared could become a key point if and when the case heads to court.

"Anyone looking at postings today on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and myriad other sites will quickly come across numerous postings that are crude, tasteless, disturbing, and lacking in social value," Zane D. Memeger, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, wrote last year. "Many of these postings, however, are arguably protected by the First Amendment, or were not made with the threatening intent defined in (a relevant Supreme Court decision)."

"Accordingly, prosecutors and investigators must work together in the early part of a case to assess and develop the evidence which clearly demonstrates that a posting was made in a context in which the maker intended to communicate a threat, or knew his statement would be so interpreted, and not to make a constitutionally protected statement," Memeger wrote.

Lofty legal arguments might seem far removed from the quiet neighborhood where Yassin lived. But Melhorn, her neighbor, said he will be following the case as it moves forward.

Monday, the glass panes in the front doors of the house Yassin occupied were still shattered — the result, Melhorn said, of the FBI using a battering ram during the Thursday raid. A parade of cars traveled through the neighborhood in the days after the arrest, one neighbor said.

"I never expected something to happen in a little town like this," Melhorn said.

Alleged ISIS supporter from Buffalo protested at Springfield school board meeting in 2012

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