A Virginia man, Abdulwuhab Humayun, has landed in hot water after he raised suspicions of anti-Semitism and support for Daesh while applying for a “technical job” at the FBI, the Daily Beast reported, citing court files.
Humayun supposedly posted controversial Islamism- and jihad-backing memes on a Twitter account, @AmericanEmirate, for two years before he applied for a technical position at the FBI, and subsequently lied to the agents as he was questioned under the guise of a fake job interview that they specifically used to get Humayun to elaborate on the matter.
The agents said they had managed to trace the aforementioned account to Humayun through subscriber data which featured multiple links to his contact details like email address, phone number, etc.
Among the memes there were some proclaiming inherently belligerent ideas.
“This is me”, one meme read, with the words captioning a picture of a video game character declaring a staunch anti-Israeli stance:
“After I cripple Israel’s ability to occupy Palestine by using improvised explosives”.
Another showed a doctored picture of Yoda donning Islamic dress with the words “Do jihad, I must. Kill infidels, I will”.
Other memes posted on the @AmericanEmirate account since 2018 reportedly endorsed everything from the "Prophet Muhammad’s shooters", who are still “out there”, to homophobia and, in particular, the murder of purportedly gay men in Iraq by Daesh terrorists.
During the investigation, started back in January, FBI agents visited a Virginia gun rage where Humayun allegedly told staff he had not once fired a gun. They were told the man had “purchased an Arsenal SLR-106F semiautomatic assault rifle from an online firearms retailer”, but failed to understand basic safety rules that apply to visitors and was thus banned from the place.
When grilled during the fake job interview in October about his social media accounts, Humayun allegedly first said he had a Twitter account registered in his first name, and then, having been warned against withholding information for the sake of a job, Humayun purportedly told the agents that he remembered using a Twitter account with the name @mrdangeroush. According to the complaint, he had switched the previous handle a number of times and most recently to @AmericanEmirate, which incidentally continued to post memes similar to the ones mentioned above, even days before Humayun’s arrest on Tuesday, 15 December.
After the interview, the investigators claimed that Humayun tried to hide his links with the @AmericanEmirate Twitter account by changing its settings to private. He then allegedly set up a new account using the @mrdangeroush name he had mentioned in the interview and gave it a bio: “Placeholder for a Twitter Bot that utilizes Twitter API”. The agents called the account a “decoy made with the intention of highlighting his computer science and computer programming skills” so that the controversy around his use of social networks wouldn’t stop him from getting a long-sought job at the FBI.
Humayun has been released since his recent arrest on the condition that he stays away from social media.
A hearing is due to take place on 18 December.
*Daesh (IS/ISIS/ISIL) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and in many other countries.
