This lady was seriously in love. In her New Jersey home, the feds claim to have found “136 operable handguns and rifles, 15 canisters of ammo and a short-range rocket launcher.”
“NJ Army Vet Who Supported Syrian Terrorist Lover Gets 3 Plea-Bargained Years In Federal Prison,” by Jerry DeMarco, Franklin Daily Voice, January 24, 2023:
A U.S. Army veteran from Sussex County must spend more than three years in federal prison for deliberately concealing money and guidance she gave to a Syrian terrorist she’d fallen in love with.
Because there’s no parole in the federal prison system, Maria Bell, 55, must serve out just about all of the plea-bargained 36-month sentence approved by a federal judge in Newark on Tuesday, Jan. 24,
Bell, of Hopatcong, offered not only money and military intelligence but the benefit of her experience in specialized weapons training to Syria-based factions fighting the Assad regime, a complaint on file in U.S. District Court says.
Bell, who was also a member of the U.S. National Guard, wired at least 18 payments totaling around $3,150 via Western Union to a self-identified member of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alias for the al-Nusra Front (ANF), the complaint says….
Although the complaint doesn’t name him, Stars and Stripes identified Bell’s lover as Abdullah Flayes.
HTS reportedly is led by Mohammad al-Jolani, the founder of al-Nusra Front, which has which has been described as the “most aggressive and successful” jihadist organization looking to establish an Islamic state in Syria. The group includes many al-Qaeda militants while claiming to be independent of al-Qaeda, federal authorities say.
According to the complaint, Bell advised her lover to make sure the terrorist group’s leaders kept American journalists from interviewing their fighters.
He at one point told her the group would attack New York City if the U.S. government tried to help the Syrian regime, it says.
Bell, in their discussions, referred tp 9/11 as “the big attack in New York,” the complaint filed in Newark says. She called it “sad,” then followed by saying that Americans “have little idea of consequences.”
Bell urged her lover to fight “on the front line” while also reassuring him that “I am with you,” the complaint says….
FBI agents arrested her at her home in late November 2020. According to the complaint, Bell was carrying travel tickets to Turkey through Egypt for that same day.
Agents search the two-bedroom home that was left to Bell by her late husband. They reported finding 136 operable handguns and rifles, 15 canisters of ammo and a short-range rocket launcher.
