Trio Guilty In Largest Terror Recruitment Case

Three Minnesota men have been found guilty of plotting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group.

A Minneapolis jury returned its verdict on Friday afternoon against Guled Ali Omar, 21, Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22, and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, also 22.

The trio - who could now face life sentences in federal prison - were among a group of 10 accused in the nation's largest terror recruitment case to date.

It is only the third IS-related federal prosecution ever to go to trial.

Six other defendants have already pleaded guilty in the case and a seventh man is thought to have made it to Syria.

The court heard Omar, Daud and Farah made "exceptionally persistent efforts" over a 14-month period to join IS.

Federal prosecutors said the trio knew they would be killing people once they arrived in Syria.

Farah was secretly recorded repeatedly defending IS' burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot in a cage.

He also laughed about another video from the jihadists that showed prisoners digging their own graves.

The trio were charged with conspiracy to commit murder outside the US and conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation.

Daud and Farah were detained in April 2015 in San Diego, where they went with an FBI informant to buy fake passports.

The group were convicted largely on the evidence of a friend, who became a paid informer and secretly recorded them.

Defence lawyers said the tapes were entrapment and the defendants’ remarks were merely tough talk from "kids".

The attorneys also argued that Farah's desire to leave the country was motivated by humanitarian aims.

It is not the first time young men from Minnesota's Somali community, the nation's largest, have been targeted by militant recruiters.

About a dozen people have left Minnesota to join jihadist groups in Syria in recent years, according to the FBI.

More than 22 Minnesota men have joined al Shabab in Somalia since 2007.

By Sky News  Photo: Sky News