‘Flames of War’
ALEXANDRIA
A Canadian citizen who traveled to Syria to join the Daesh group nearly a decade ago pleaded guilty Friday to serving as one of the organization’s more prominent English-language propagandists.
Mohammed Khalifa, 38, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death, at a hearing in US District Court in Alexandria. US District Judge T.S. Ellis III accepted the plea. According to court records, Khalifa left Canada for Syria in 2013 after being inspired by the lectures of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US cleric who later became a leading figure in Al-Qaeda. Prosecutors said Khalifa narrated two notorious Daesh group propaganda videos — “Flames of War” in 2014 and “Flames of War II” in 2017 — designed to recruit Westerners to join the Daesh group or to kill Westerners as part of an international holy war campaign.
