There are two different stories about Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, the 20-year-old Mississauga man who faces life in prison for plotting to blow up New York’s Times Square and subway system.His family, friends and Canadian lawyer — who have broken their silence to plead for leniency — say El Bahnasawy was not a violent extremist, but a teenager struggling with mental illness and drug addictions when an undercover FBI informant set him up.It was not members of the so-called Islamic State who devised the bombing plot, they argue, but the FBI who operated an overzealous sting operation, a frequent criticism of the American police force since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.“Obviously, the Islamic State are horrible people and I think everybody sees them as the enemy,” said El Bahnasawy’s sister, Basma, in an interview with Star. “But … it was the FBI who were the ones who manipulated my brother to actually try and go there and do whatever crime they wanted him to do.”U.S. prosecutors say otherwise.“El Bahnasawy worked to support ISIS for an extended period, from late 2015 until his arrest in May 2016,” wrote prosecutor Geoffrey Berman in his 172-page submission to a New York federal court, referring to the group also known as Daesh, ISIL and the “Islamic State.”“He planned and plotted for more than a month to carry out the NYC attack. As his actions and communications demonstrated in chilling and explicit terms, El Bahnasawy was a proud and devoted supporter of a global terrorist organization dedicated to murdering non-believers in the West.”Exactly what was said in online chatrooms and encrypted social media apps between El Bahnasawy and a well-known recruiter for Daesh as well as the FBI informant is unknown. Many of the court documents are sealed and news of El Bahnasawy’s arrest and guilty plea only emerged months after secret hearings had been held in New York.This is what ...
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