Connecticut man who paid $500 to be smuggled toward Syria gets 92 months in ISIS case

A Connecticut man who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and paid $500 to a person he believed could smuggle him toward Syria was sentenced to 92 months in federal prison, the Justice Department announced.

U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden of the District of Connecticut sentenced Ahmad Khalil Elshazly, 29, of West Haven, to 92 months in prison followed by lifetime supervised release. Elshazly, a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2022, to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Elshazly began expressing a desire around September 2018 to travel to Syria and fight for ISIS. He swore allegiance, known as “bay’at,” to the group and its then-leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in numerous online and in-person conversations. In October 2019, just after al-Baghdadi’s death, Elshazly sent a message pledging allegiance to the group’s new leader, the department said.

Elshazly also created and administered a pro-ISIS Discord server, where he posted hundreds of ISIS and other extremist propaganda memes and videos, according to the Justice Department.

On Dec. 14, 2019, Elshazly paid $500 to a person he believed was an ISIS facilitator who could smuggle him from the United States to Turkey, the department said. He believed the arrangement would connect him with an ISIS member who would help him reach the group in Syria. The next day, he was arrested after arriving in Stonington, Connecticut, where he expected to board a boat to begin the journey.

Elshazly has been detained since his arrest and has accumulated numerous disciplinary infractions while in custody, according to the department. In August 2025, officers searching his cell found a handwritten plan for a coordinated uprising at the detention facility. The plan included diagrams of the housing unit, instructions for breaching secured areas and tactics for confronting the Correctional Emergency Response Team.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force investigated the case with assistance from the Stonington Police Department, the New Haven Police Department and the Connecticut State Police. The task force includes participants from numerous federal, state and local agencies, among them Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the State Department, Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Trial Attorney John Cella of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Neeraj N. Patel of the District of Connecticut prosecuted the case.