An indictment will be filed on Thursday against a 16-year-old Jerusalem resident who attempted to enlist his classmates to join the Islamic State terror organization.
A few weeks ago, the Jerusalem District Police Central Division opened an investigation into a suspicion that a student at a high school in the Beit Hanina neighborhood in northern Jerusalem.
At the beginning of the month, detectives arrested the suspect (16, originally from northern Israel but currently lives with his parents in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem) on charges of joining a terror organization and enlisting others to a terror organization.
The investigation found that the suspect, who studies in the electronics and physics track at his school, attempted to spread Islamic State (ISIS) ideas among his friends at school and his usernames on social media were that of one of the terror organization's former leaders.
On his cell phone, police investigators found various pieces of evidence to strengthen the suspicions, including many terrorist and violent materials, from Islamic State propaganda to videos explaining how to create explosives.
According to testimonies by his peers, the suspect repeatedly attempted to enlist them in the terror organization and even threatened them that if they chose not to join the organization, one of its terrorists would one day kill them.
He even told some that he wanted to carry out a terror attack using a car bomb or explosives and to die a "khalif [sic]."
The investigation further found that some of the teachers at his school knew about his ambitions and even called him "Daeshdush" (a play on the Arabic abbreviation for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).
The suspect would allegedly spread terrorist content among the students, praise the terror organization, its actions, and ideology, identify to his peers as a member and supporter, and would often speak about terror attacks, his will to go to Iraq, and to serve the murderous terror organization.
The suspect's detention was extended by the court as needed. Upon the investigation's completion, a notice of the prosecutor's intent was submitted ahead of an indictment, and his detention was extended again.
Sergeant Major Kamal Falah, the head of the Jerusalem District Police Central Division investigations team noted: "We focus activity and invest great efforts and resources to foil attacks and terrorist activity and to arrest terrorist operatives. Thus officers in Jerusalem foiled dozens of terrorist attacks and intended attacks since the war began nearly a year ago.
"In this case, the investigation's findings and the evidence leave no place for doubt that the suspect was a terror operative serving ISIS. The fact that he exploited the fact that he was a student and the school to spread the terror organization's ideology and enlist people is serious and it is concerning that many in the school, including teachers, knew about it and did not move a finger or report it to the authorities to stop him. This is a terror cell of one ISIS-supporting teen in the school, who planned and tried in every way to turn his peers into terror operatives affiliated with the murderous group and to carry out acts of terror in the future. We will continue our determined and continuous struggle against terrorists whoever they may be."
