Jury deliberating in federal trial of ex-DePaul student accused of assisting Islamic State terrorist group
DePaul University student Thomas Osadzinski was a naive teenager “lost in the abyss of the internet,” not some computer whiz bent on using his skills to spread terrorist propaganda, his lawyer told jurors at his federal trial Friday.
Osadzinski, 22, has been on trial for two weeks on charges of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State. The jury began deliberating the case at about 2 p.m.
Prosecutors alleged Osadzinski, who had pledged fealty to ISIS, used his budding computer skills to create a first-of-its-kind program aimed at helping the terrorist organization spread it’s violent messages across the internet. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
In closing arguments Friday, Osadzinski’s attorney, Joshua Herman, blasted prosecutors for bringing the charges, calling his client’s online activities legal free speech and saying the First Amendment was “two words the government can’t even get out of its mouth.”
“Big words, no action,” Herman said in his closing remarks. “Bold pledges, empty promises. ... All we have are exaggerations and boasts of a lonely 19-year-old college student lost in the abyss of the internet.”
A recent convert to Islam, Osadzinski spoke only rudimentary Arabic and fell victim to overzealous agents who pretended to be ISIS sympathizers, befriended him, and gave him a mission that in the end went nowhere, Herman said.
Herman painted his client as desperately naive, peppering his online chats with emojis, using stencils and fabric to make his own ISIS flag, even printing out jihad posters at the campus library.
Herman also called attention to FBI reports where undercover operatives described Osadzinski as an ISIS “fan boy” — a term Herman said was akin to “someone writing letters to Justin Bieber.”
“All this talk about things he wants to do for ISIS,” Herman said in a mocking tone. “It’s like he’s the Elon Musk of the Caliphate.”
In their summation of the evidence, however, prosecutors said Osadzinski’s statements both online and in undercover recordings showed he was excited to have created a new and potentially powerful tool for ISIS, which relies heavily on social media to spread propaganda.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Melody Wells said Osadzinski, after several trials and errors, managed to create a program that could rapidly download, replicate and spread violent ISIS videos faster than social media platforms could delete them, significantly improving the terrorist organization’s messaging capabilities.
“He came up with something valuable, and he knew it,” Wells said. “He was doing something that mattered.”
In one 2019 conversation highlighted by prosecutors, Osadzinski told someone he thought was an ISIS propaganda chief that he was “the only person in the world doing this right now.”
When asked what he planned to do with the script he’d written, Osadzinski allegedly replied, “Spread it everywhere ... now I’m making as much jihad as possible.”
Throughout the three hours of closing arguments, Osadzinski sat at the defense table dressed in a white shirt and wearing black glasses and a face mask.
The trial was the latest in a string of ISIS-related cases brought in U.S. District Court in Chicago that have continued well after the collapse of the group’s caliphate in Syria and Iraq nearly four years ago.
Most recently, two friends from far north suburban Zion were convicted by a federal jury in 2019 of attempting to aid the terrorist group by providing cellphones to an undercover FBI agent to be used as detonators for bombs. Joseph Jones was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while his co-defendant, Edward Schimenti, received 13½ years behind bars.
The 38-page criminal complaint filed in 2019 alleged Osadzinski converted to Islam while a teen, expressing his devotion to the Islamic State in online forums that included undercover FBI employees he believed were terrorist sympathizers.
In his posts, Osadzinski said the AK-47 was his weapon of choice and that he was researching ideas on how to make homemade bombs and explosive belts, according to the complaint.
But he also said he was interested in getting married and raising a family before ever carrying out a martyrdom operation, the complaint alleged. For that reason, he chose to focus on media, calling it the “highest form of jihad,” according to the charges.
Beginning in 2019, Osadzinski started to design a process that uses a computer script to make ISIS propaganda more conveniently accessed and disseminated by users on social media, according to the complaint.
To short-circuit attempts by a particular social media platform to remove offensive content, Osadzinski’s computer process was designed to automatically copy and preserve ISIS media postings in an organized format, allowing users to continue to conveniently access and disseminate the content, the charges alleged.
“It can run on any computer and will be very lightweight, fast and secure,” Osadzinski allegedly wrote to one undercover federal employee.
Osadzinski eventually shared his script and instructions for how to use it with individuals whom he believed to be ISIS supporters and members of pro-ISIS media organizations, the complaint said.
He also shared a screen capture of his computer showing files containing more than 700 gigabytes of ISIS material, including magazines, speeches and videos, the charges alleged.
According to the complaint, the FBI had been monitoring Osadzinski’s online activities for nearly two years. He was aware he was being watched because an agent attempted to interview him in March 2018, according to the complaint.
Osadzinski was arrested the day the complaint was unsealed and has been held without bond pending trial.
