A North Carolina man who was featured in a Nightly News story last month about foreign fighters attempting to join the fighting in Syria pleaded guilty on Thursday to terrorism charges.
Donald Ray Morgan
pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to a designated
foreign terrorist organization and illegally possessing a firearm as a
convicted felon.
Morgan, 44, was
initially held on the gun charge after his arrest at John F. Kennedy
International Airport on Aug. 2, shortly after he arrived on a flight
from Frankfurt, Germany. The terrorism charge was added Thursday, and he
pleaded guilty to both charges.
Morgan admitted that he
tried, unsuccessfully, to travel from Lebanon to Syria to join ISIS. He
also admitted posting pro-jihadist messages on social media and, as
prosecutors put it, conducting an interview with an freelance journalist
"to express his support for ISIL/ISIS and violent terrorist
activities."
That exclusive interview
was conducted for NBC News and featured in an exclusive Nightly News
report by NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel about
people in the US who seek to go to Syria to join ISIS and other terror
groups.
Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 18, 2015
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