Dallas-area ISIS recruiter goes on trial for recruiting jihadists to kill nonbelievers

“ISIS will chop your head off.”

That was how Taryn Meeks began her opening statement Tuesday to a federal jury in Dallas that’s hearing testimony in the international terrorism trial of a Richardson man.

Meeks, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said those were among the words Azzam Mohamad Rahim uttered during his lengthy online campaign to recruit others to join ISIS and kill nonbelievers at home and abroad.

“Smash his head on the wall,” the government also quoted Rahim as saying on Zello, a social media platform. “Think of a way to kill the biggest number of people possible.”

Rahim, 42, sporting a bald head and thick beard, is charged with lying to the FBI about his support for the Islamic State and with plotting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He has been locked up since his March 2017 arrest. The trial is expected to last about a week.

Details from his indictment and two detention hearings revealed how Rahim allegedly used the internet to mobilize people to engage in jihad, or holy war. Rahim, a U.S. citizen who owns or used to own an Oak Cliff convenience store, told listeners on Zello to kill as many “infidels” as possible, court records say.

He is charged with six counts of making a false statement to a federal agency, one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The indictment says Rahim provided ISIS with “services and personnel” from October 2014 to March 2017. Prosecutors plan to detail those allegations during the trial.

Rahim didn’t just encourage people to kill, he did so with specific detail, such as the use of poison, rocks, trucks, burning or even by pushing people off buildings, prosecutors said.

And Meeks said Rahim not only used the Zello channel he controlled to recruit people around the world to commit “horrendous acts of violence,” he bragged about how many members of his channel had already mobilized for jihad.

“This isn’t just talk,” Meeks told the jury. “They would seek out the defendant for guidance.”

Rahim even took credit for an ISIS-inspired attack on an Istanbul nightclub in 2017 that killed 39 people, Meeks said. Rahim claimed to have called for an attack in Turkey about a month before, she said.

And when a truck barreled into a crowd of people in Nice, France, that same year, Rahim cheered the resulting murders of 86 people, she said.

“I was happy for this act,” Rahim said, according to Meeks. “Those dogs.”

Meeks also told jurors that Rahim conspired with Mouner El Aoual, a Moroccan citizen who is being held an Italian prison for allegedly planning a terrorist attack in that country. Italian police officials are expected to ...

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