A machine gun fanatic living in the country was charged on Wednesday with supporting ISIS.
Manuchuri Manuchekuli, a Tajikstan-born truck driver living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, poured $70,000 into “individuals affiliated with ISIS” between December 2021 and April 2023.
He is also said to have boasted about his firearms skills to his terrified companions abroad.
“Thank you, I'm ready, brother,” Manucekli, 34, texted a Turkish contact with a 17-second video of him firing an assault rifle at a target at a shooting range in New Jersey, according to a federal government complaint.
“I go to workouts at least once or twice a week,” he boasted to the same man along with a similar video, court documents allege.
A federal agent discovered a photo of his Manucekli's iCloud, proudly pointing two AK-47 rifles into the air, court papers show.
Authorities say the terrifying sympathizers entered Tajikistan on a non-immigrant tourist visa in June 2016 and remained in the country after the December deadline expired.
He then married a Bronx stripper in a “fake marriage” in March 2017, but his efforts to gain legal status within the country failed, as he failed to provide support documents, according to the complaint.
He lived illegally in Brooklyn at the time of his arrest, the federal government said.
According to law enforcement sources, Manucekli's ex-wife crept up on him, calling tips on the New York state terrorist attacks, and told authorities he “convicted acts of violence” about Green Card's marriage.
The text message between Manuchekhri and the stripper reveals that their entanglement has nothing to do with love.
The woman, who has not been identified as “not sounding like an asshole, she didn't sign the documents until she came forward in 2000,” texted him after asking her to sign her divorce papers in 2021.
After Manuchekhri responds “I don't have such money,” the stripper says, “I'll give you time to save it…but I haven't signed the paper until I get the parts,” the paper says.
However, the dancer got worse in Manucekli after he stiffened her with a $200 per month fee he promised, court documents allege.
“You've completely ignored me and you haven't filed without divorce, so you're going to get stuck just because you want to continue playing me like you're stupid!!! Please change my number and not looking for me!!!” According to the complaint, she texted him.
Manuchekhri also admitted to his friend that he had only seen his “wife” twice.
“Yes, she's a stripper lol,” he told a friend in one of his text messages, the complaint states.
Manuchekhri was released without bail during a hearing in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday afternoon.
His lawyers suggested that even if he knew where the money Manucekli sent abroad would go, he would not prove he was a terrorist.
“We look forward to the fact that the government's actual evidence of allegedly sending financial support to orphans and widows proves that he becomes a terrorist,” Julian Harris Calvin Federal advocates in New Yorksaid in an email.
One of the men Manucekli planned to concentrate cash was arrested by Turkish authorities on January 28, 2024 in Istanbul's 2024 bombing of a terrorist attack vehicle at the Roman Catholic Church, the Feds said.
Manucekli also told his ex-wife he praised Uzbek national Saifru Saipov for committing the infamous terrorist attacks in New York City in 2017, the complaint alleges.
Saipov is “in heaven now,” the defendant's terrorist told her, court documents say.
Manuchekhri faces up to 45 years in prison on charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS because he illegally owns firearms and owns firearms in the US in immigration fraud.
