Jessica Bowie, 35, asked a bumbling series of questions while being recruited into ISIS through social media messages, according to a federal criminal complaint.
The Albany, New York woman — who also went by the name Aisha Saif — appeared confused when an unidentified militant sent her an oath of allegiance on a “well-known” social media site on May 28. “We pledge our allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful and the Caliph of the Muslims, the Mujahid Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, to listen and obey,” the user instructed her in Arabic to say, according to the complaint.
Bowie then asked in a bumbling reply, “So, I’m just saying this?”
“Until you join the [Islamic State],” the user responded.
“Saying this means joining the [Islamic State]?” She asked again, before the user wrote back, “Yes.”
Bowie immediately sent the user an audio file of herself saying the oath, which vowed loyalty to the current leader of ISIS, according to the criminal complaint. The exchange was part of Bowie’s “bayah” — a formal oath of allegiance in the Islamic tradition — and hints at how she became “radicalized online,” according to authorities.
She allegedly then sent a second audio file vowing official allegiance to ISIS to another “jihadist” through a different social media site on May 30. Bowie, who joined Islam five years ago, also sent messages revealing that she planned to move from Albany to ISIS-run territory in the Middle East, according to the feds.
“When I can migrate, I will poison these infidels,” she wrote in another message on social media, according to the criminal complaint. It’s unclear which social media sites Bowie used, but she was sometimes kicked off for expressing radical Islamic views, according to the complaint. “Praise be to Allah for September 11th,” she allegedly wrote on one account in May.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III said at a press conference Thursday that Bowie was on the feds’ radar for weeks leading up to her arrest and was believed to have been “radicalized online,” Sarcone told reporters that Bowie went from a little girl “waving the American flag” after 9/11 to now having stickers of the fallen towers. “Let that sink in: Miss Bowie didn’t just want to kill lawmakers, she wanted a complete disruption of our government,” he said.
In the viral moment that sparked the investigation, Bowie allegedly bought bomb materials from a Home Depot on Aug. 5, while wearing a burqa, and planned to blow up the Capitol building with help from accomplices, who turned out to be FBI informants, according to federal authorities. She told an informant that she would rather target the White House but that it would be too difficult, and instead settled on a plot to kill as many elected officials as possible at the state Capitol in Albany. Her alleged plan included fleeing to an ISIS-controlled area in Syria after the attack.
“We definitely want to make sure the senators get killed for sure,” Bowie allegedly told an informant on Aug. 5. “That’s the most important part. Destroying the building too? That’s, that’s ideal…”
She allegedly scoped out the Capitol during at least five visits over two months, taking photographs from various vantage points, and settled on detonating the explosive device at the Washington Avenue entrance on the north side of the Capitol. On Wednesday, informants met with Bowie and provided her with an inert explosive device and an inert handgun along with instructions on how to detonate the explosive, according to the complaint. The FBI arrested her near a McDonald’s after that meeting.
After her bust, she allegedly told FBI agents, “There’s no helping me, you guys know enough, there’s no helping me, I’m… Going to prison for the rest of my life,” according to the complaint. “Material support is up to 20 years in prison, I already Googled it before, I know I’m going to jail,” she allegedly said.
Bowie is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and is being held without bail at the Schenectady County jail.