Air Force Vet Charged With Joining ISIS

A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted a former U.S. Air Force mechanic on charges of providing material support to ISIS and destroying evidence in the case. The indictment released Tuesday alleges Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh tried to join the self-declared Islamic State between May 2014 and Jan 2015, and that he attemped to destroy evidence of those actions shortly before he was charged in a secret complaint on Jan. 16. Pugh, who was recently fired from his job as an airplane mechanic in the Middle East, flew from Egypt to Turkey on Jan. 10 in order to get to the Syrian border. He was subsequently rejected by Turkish authorities and sent back to Egypt before being deported to the United States. Prosecutors said Pugh’s Internet search history revealed he had looked up “borders controlled by Islamic State” and “kobani border crossing,” the latter referring to a city on Syria’s border with Turkey that was recently reclaimed by Kurdish troops. If convicted, Pugh faces as much as 35 years in prison.