A young man from Aurora accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the al-Qaida-affiliated terror group Jabhat al-Nusrah on the battlefield is expected to plead guilty in June, court authorities said Wednesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan set the change of plea hearing for Abdella Ahmed Tounisi, 19, for June 30.
Tounisi was arrested in April 2013 while trying to board a flight to Turkey at O’Hare Airport.
Federal authorities said Tounisi was a close friend of Adel Daoud of Hillside, who is set to stand trial this summer for plotting in September 2012 to blow up a bar in downtown Chicago. Daoud’s plan was thwarted because he allegedly used a fake bomb given to him by an undercover federal agent.
Tounisi began to help Daoud plan that attack, authorities said, but he backed out when he began to suspect the undercover agent was indeed a “spy.”
Still, even after the FBI questioned Tounisi in the wake of Daoud’s arrest, prosecutors said Tounisi continued to pursue his own interest in joining “the vanguard of al-Qaida.”
They’ve called him a “determined” and “resourceful” would-be terrorist.
