It has been released for publication Monday that the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), together with police, arrested an Arab resident of Jerusalem who joined the ISIS terrorist group and may have planned terror attacks in Israel.
Khalil Adel Khalil, a 25-year-old resident of A-Tor, is an Israeli citizen, and worked as a medical assistant at the Eytanim psychiatric hospital. He was arrested in early March shortly after returning from Syria.
Under interrogation, Khalil revealed he had planned to join ISIS in Syria as far back as August 2014 together with a friend, named as Mohammed Sami A-Aziz Abu Sanineh.
The pair made the decision after watching ISIS propaganda videos on the internet.
Khalil also admitted that as part of his preparations for combat training in Syria he had joined the Hebrew University gym in Jerusalem, where he worked out regularly.
He said he had told his family and employers at the hospital that he planned to take a vacation for a number of weeks to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. In reality, he had booked a one-way ticket to Greece and from there a flight to Istanbul in Turkey - a common route taken by would-be jihadis into Syria - with the intent of joining the Islamic State terrorist group.
At the start of January Khalil and Sanineh traveled to Istanbul, where they established contact over the internet with an ISIS operative, who arranged for them to travel to an apartment in the city of Urfa in south-eastern Turkey, close to the Syrian border.
Once they arrived they were introduced to a number of other ISIS recruits from across the globe, including several Bangladeshis, as well as two other Israeli Arabs. The terrorist recruits were split into individual cells of four or five, and smuggled across the border into Syria by smugglers working for ISIS.
After a number of weeks Khalil returned to Israel, where he was detained for questioning by security services.
On Monday the Jerusalem District Court handed an indictment against him for, among other things, joining and membership in a banned terrorist group, attempting to make contact with a foreign agent, and exiting the country illegally.
"This case drives home the security threat that is involved when Israelis join the fighting ranks of ISIS, after they were exposed to the organization's propaganda, which is mostly disseminated on the internet," the ISA said in a statement.
"Their return to Israel, after accumulating knowledge and practical experience in terror activity and fighting, poses a meaningful risk of carrying out severe terrorism within Israel."