Key West The Newspaper

“Stand up with us my brother. Stand up with the black flag and the AK with 10 mag, fight with us, be a gangster with us, kill our enemies and convert to Islam now in USA.”

According to a federal criminal complaint the above quote was one of the posts 23-year old Stock Island resident, Harlem Suarez, had placed on a Facebook page last spring.

On April 8, an unidentified man went into the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office because he had received a friend request from Suarez, who had written, on his Facebook page: “We are the islamic state We are isis Muslims” and “We are you behad cristians isis.”

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office referred the tip to the FBI. In May, an FBI informant friended Suarez on Facebook. Suarez allegedly told the informant, in an online chat, that he had two guns, and was looking for a rifle and a bulletproof vest.

See criminal complaint here.

According to the affidavit, Suarez also told the informant, during a telephone conversation, that he had “thought about traveling to the Middle East and that he had been trying to contact someone from Syria.” In the FBI document, there is no indication that Suarez had ever been in contact with a member of the Islamic State.

The FBI confidential informant plotted with Suarez to make a “timer bomb.” Suarez allegedly planned to test his explosives in the garage just beneath his parents’ apartment on Shrimp Road.

Also, according to the complaint, Suarez ordered AK-47s online asking that they be delivered to a Key West pawnshop, where he would to pick them up. Due to an error in paperwork, Suarez never came in possession of the guns. Pawnshop employees also alerted the FBI. The FBI said pawnshops and other weapon depots were warned about Suarez a month ago and agreed not to sell him weapons.

Also described in the complaint is an ISIS recruiting video allegedly created by Suarez inside a Homestead motel.  The video invites viewers to destroy America:

“I call to other brothers worldwide to create Caliphate in the Middle East. Destroy our enemies against us. Let live only who are our brothers and sisters. Send our mujahideen to a different soil with tanks, missiles grenades and other tactical needs. America soil is the past, we will destroy America and divide it in two. We will raise our black flag on top of your white house and any president on duty (cut head).”

The complaint says Suarez had planned other attacks including a Fourth of July attack in South Beach or possibly in Marathon and attacks on local hotels and the homes of police officers before deciding he would begin by setting off a backpack nail bomb on a Key West beach using a cellphone.

According to the complaint, Suarez put on a black tactical vest, black shirt, black face mask, and a yellow and black scarf and met with an informant last Monday at a motel showing him the homemade bomb before being taken into custody.

Suarez’ Attorney Richard Della Fera told the media, after Suarez appeared in court on Tuesday, that his client, is not a terrorist.

“I will say at this stage that it appears Harlem may be a troubled and confused young man, but he is certainly not a terrorist,” Della Fera, said in a statement Wednesday. “He comes from a very good, hard-working family that arrived here from Cuba in 2004 because they yearned for freedom. They raised their son to love this country.”