North York man arrested on U.S. charges of fundraising for Islamic State terror group

A 34-year-old North York man is among four people charged in the United States on Thursday with an alleged plot to fundraise and send money in support of the Islamic State terrorist group.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Khalilullah Yousuf was arrested Wednesday by Canadian police on a request from American law enforcement.

The Americans allege that Yousuf was part of a group chat involving “supporters of ISIS and other groups that adhered to similar violent jihadist ideologies.”

Prosecutors allege that Yousuf provided a link to a bitcoin address through that encrypted group chat that was controlled by an unidentified “facilitator,” and that he personally sent $20,347.89 to the facilitator — part of a total of $35,000 that was raised by the four defendants and transferred between February 2021 and July 2022.

Yousuf and another female co-defendant, 25-year-old Seema Rahman, of Edison, N.J., also allegedly created “multiple GoFundMe fundraising campaigns purporting to collect money for charitable causes” — the proceeds of which were then wired to the ISIS facilitator via Western Union.

“These defendants promoted the violent extremism of ISIS by pretending to raise money for humanitarian causes only to transfer the funds to cryptocurrency accounts tied to the group,” assistant attorney general Matthew Olsen, of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.

More to come.

Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan

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