Who is Shahidul Gaffar and Nabila Khan? Wiki, Biography, Age, Arrested, Charged

The couple were sentenced Thursday to 18 months and two years in prison, respectively. according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Gaffar, a naturalized citizen who has lived in the United States for 26 years, insisted that he did not hate America and successfully ran restaurants in Montgomery County.

“God bless America, God bless America,” Gaffar told District Judge Joshua Wolson.

One of Khan’s brothers, Ibrahim Khan, later died while fighting in Syria in 2019. Khan’s second brother, Junaid Hasan Khan, remains missing and is presumed dead, the Inquirer reported. Both had identified themselves in social media posts as ISIS fighters, federal prosecutors said. Khan told Wolson that he flew his children to Bangladesh to be with his family when Junaid Hasan Khan started talking about going to Syria.

Ibrahim Khan was living with Gaffar in Pennsylvania at the time while attending school in New York on a student visa, the Inquirer reported. But Ibrahim returned to Bangladesh and also started talking about joining ISIS after breaking up with a woman, the couple said. Gaffar insisted that the money he sent to South Asia was primarily intended to support his wife, but Ibrahim pressured her to hand it over to him, according to the report.

“The thought process was: since we’ve already lost one brother, let’s not lose another,” Gaffar said. “We try to solve our own problem. That’s why I didn’t go to the police here … We thought we could handle it ourselves. ” Wolson rejected the couple’s request that they be sentenced to house arrest, but escalated the start of their sentences to avoid leaving their four children between the ages of 3 and 13 without a guardian.

“We can’t dream of anything,” the couple’s eldest daughter wrote in a letter to Wolson. “Vision is blurry.” But authorities said Gaffar and Khan contributed to the coffers and manpower of ISIS, the “lifeblood” of the terror group, with their actions. Gaffar and Khan, while enjoying all the rights and privileges of living in the United States, conspired to support violent extremists who regard our country as their sworn enemy,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Philadelphia, Bradley Benavides .