New York: An ex-stockbroker from New York who joined the Daesh group and trained with them during their brutal rule in Syria and Iraq was found guilty on Tuesday.

Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, a Kazakh-born US citizen, was the latest defendant in a string of people accused of fleeing their home countries to fight alongside militants.

US Attorney Breon Peace of Brooklyn said in a statement that "today's verdict in an American courtroom is a victory for our system of justice" and against the Daesh organisation. Lawyers for Asainov had no immediate comment.

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According to his ex-wife, Asainov was a former broker who adored his young daughter. He converted to Islam in 2009, quit his job, and then he began to watch radical sermons online. In December 2013, as IS swept to power, he abruptly uprooted himself from his family in Brooklyn and travelled to Syria.

Prosecutors claimed that Asainov participated in numerous battles, developed a recognisable IS profile as a sniper, and later served as an instructor to nearly 100 other long-range shooters in a case that was largely based on his own words in messaging apps, emails, recorded phone calls, and an FBI interview.

"The evidence established that the defendant's actions caused deaths. It's time to hold him accountable, the prosecutor said in his closing remarks to the Brooklyn federal court jury.

Asainov, 46, declined to give a testimony, claiming he was "not involved in this process."
His attorneys conceded that he travelled to Syria and joined the Daesh organisation, but they contended that his claims of his involvement were boasts that lacked firsthand confirmation and did not establish that any lives were lost as a result of his actions.

In her summation, defence attorney Sabrina Shroff urged the jury "not to confuse Mr. Asainov's views with what is needed to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt" because "nobody's arguing to you that Mr. Asainov's view of the world is not a very warped view."

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She claimed that not a single piece of paper linking Mr. Asainov to anything associated with the Daesh group would indicate that he is, in fact, the person he claims to be.

Asainov was found guilty of crimes such as offering and attempting to offer material support to what the US designates as a foreign terrorist organisation by the jury, whose identities were kept secret. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars as a result of the jury's finding that his actions contributed to at least one death. The date of his sentencing is June 7.

Millions of people were forced into a "caliphate" governed by the IS group's strict interpretation of Islamic law, which was carried out through massacres, beheadings, sexual slavery, and other atrocities, after IS fighters captured large portions of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Tens of thousands of foreign fighters joined the group's bloody campaign; at least a handful of them were US citizens, according to a 2018 academic report from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. In major cities and beyond, fighting caused a wide swath of deaths, displacement, and destruction. In 2019, the extremists lost the final pieces of their domain.

Soon after, Asainov was captured by US-backed forces and handed over to US authorities. According to video shown at trial, he identified himself as a "sniper" and answered openly how he had instructed others, saying that he could spend three hours just going over the specifics of pulling the trigger.

According to trial testimony, he had also been open in his messages and phone calls from Syria to friends and his now-ex-wife, whom he had left behind.

Do you know what Daesh is? Right. I-S-I-S. Do you ever watch TV news? I am situated in that area. He told his ex in a voicemail that was translated from Russian by authorities, "I am one of its fighters. "We are the most dangerous terrorist group in the world that ever existed.”"

He sent pictures of the bloodied bodies of men he claimed to have fought, as well as pictures of himself in camouflage gear holding a rifle. He asked for money to buy a night scope for his rifle and listed a number of notable battles in which he claimed to have taken part in a text message to one confidante who was actually a US government informant.

Later, as US-backed forces battled to take control of the terrorists' de facto capital of Raqqa in 2017, Asainov called another friend to ask for money to send his new wife and children to safety. The call was made while explosions could be heard in the background on Asainov's phone. Jurors were urged by Shroff not to accept his statements at face value.

She asserted, "Saying the same false things repeatedly does not make them true.

Jail officials claimed they later discovered a hand-drawn rendition of the militants' flag in Asainov's cell after he defiantly proclaimed at his arraignment that he was a "Daesh citizen, not a United States citizen" following his arrest.

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On the facility's recorded phones, he informed his mother that her son "doesn't exist anymore," having been replaced by a man who perceived himself as a holy warrior who engaged in combat and murder at the direction of the divine, didn't regret it, and would "be fighting until the end."

In one translated call, he said to her, "I won't ever change this path, even if they give me freedom a thousand times.