TAMPA, Fla. — A 26-year-old man who planned a terrorist attack on the Tampa Bay area will spend close to 20 years in prison for trying to support ISIS, a federal judge decided Thursday.
Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari was convicted for attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely ISIS. Back in February, Al-Azhari pleaded guilty nearly three years after he was first arrested.
Material support includes providing money, assets and even weapons to someone or an organization.
Al-Azhari will be in prison for the next 18 years, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, the U.S. State Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a release.
In May 2020, when Al-Azhari was arrested, federal investigators said he was in the process of secretly buying high-powered guns and silencers and was also researching IEDs, suicide vests and explosive poisons. All of this was part of his plan to support ISIS, the release said.
Investigators said at the time he scoped out potential targets like Honeymoon Island and the FBI's Tampa Field Office, but also researched Clearwater Beach, Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa and the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.
According to law enforcement, he even rehearsed parts of the planned attack.
Court documents describe Al-Azhari as an ISIS supporter who "consumed ISIS propaganda and spoke favorably" about the terrorist group.
Al-Azhari, while a U.S. citizen, spent most of his life abroad before he was sentenced in 2015 to three years on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia. After his release in 2018, he was deported to the U.S., spending time in Florida and California.
In 2019, he returned to Tampa and less than a year later, in April 2020, he began trying to buy guns illegally on eBay, federal investigators said. During this time, the FBI was monitoring him, officials said.
At one point in 2020, Al-Azhari reportedly expressed "admiration" for the Pulse nightclub shooter and said he wanted to carry out a similar mass shooting.
In January 2022, a federal judge ruled Al-Azhari was incompetent to stand trial.
Previous reporting from 10 Tampa Bay contributed to this article.