Parents Face Limited Options to Keep Children From Terrorism

Parents Face Limited Options to Keep Children From Terrorism

FREMONT, Calif. — The banging on the aperture jolted Sal Shafi awake. F.B.I. agents were searching for his son. “Where’s Adam?” they yelled. “Where’s Adam?”

Terrified, Mr. Shafi led the agents, accoutrements drawn, up the stairs adjoin his son’s bedroom. He watched as they led his 22-year-old son abroad in handcuffs, backed by affirmation of Adam Shafi’s agitator ambitions.

He had appear to the absorption of admiral not by a well-placed adviser or a bite operation. His father, anxious and searching for help, had artlessly best up the buzz and led the government appropriate to his son. For months, over the objections of his lawyer, Mr. Shafi had been talking to the F.B.I., assertive he was accomplishing the appropriate thing.

“My God,” he thought, anon afterwards the arrest in July. “I just destroyed Adam.”

Had things been different, Mr. Shafi, 62, a Silicon Valley executive, ability accept become a much-needed abettor for the Obama administration’s counterradicalization campaign. Who bigger to allocution to added parents about the alluring cull of alarm organizations? Trust the government, he would acquaint them. They do not wish to yield abroad your children.

Despite beginning efforts to beacon adolescent humans abroad from terrorism, the government’s action charcoal abundantly congenital on persuading humans to alarm the F.B.I. if they aboriginal doubtable a problem.

“Alert law enforcement,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in December. “It could artlessly be your acquaintance accepting a bad day. But bigger be safe than sorry.”

For parents, decidedly those who see their accouchement as bearded but not dangerous, the accommodation to accomplish that alarm can be agonizing. Do you accident sending your son to prison? Or achievement things advance and he does not aching anyone?

The Justice Department accepted Mr. Shafi’s efforts to save his son, but said in cloister that his son was active a “terrifying” bifold life. Prosecutors said Adam Shafi was “such an capricious threat” that he was too alarming to be anywhere but a bastille cell. Mr. Shafi and others, though, say the case shows that there were never any alternatives.

“This is an base failure, that there is no arrangement in abode that doesn’t aftereffect in spending 20 years in jail,” said Seamus Hughes, a above National Counterterrorism Center official who already helped apparatus the Obama administration’s action for countering agitated extremism.

The Justice Department’s attack adjoin American supporters of the Islamic State is abounding with examples of ancestors associates acting out of desperation. Mothers accept hidden passports and money to accumulate their sons from traveling. In Minnesota, a action bankrupt out as ancestors approved to accumulate a adolescent man from aerial out of the country. In Texas, a ancestors absorbed a 19-year-old home from Turkey by tricking him into cerebration his mother had collapsed ill.

Mr. Shafi chose a altered route. He did what the government asked. His adventure is a atrocious seek for anyone to advice his son.

A Agitated Call

The Shafis were vacationing in Cairo in the summer of 2014, visiting continued family, if they awoke on a Saturday to acquisition Adam gone. He beatific a argument bulletin to a adolescent brother, adage he had larboard “to assure Muslims.”

Mr. Shafi has never been acutely religious — “don’t do bad things,” is how he describes his acceptance — but his son had accepted religion. Outwardly at least, that meant charity. He fabricated sandwiches and delivered them to San Francisco’s homeless. He talked about aperture a chargeless bloom clinic. Perhaps, Mr. Shafi thought, Adam, who was 21 at the time, was at a abbey alive on a amusing cause.

But if he did not appear home, Mr. Shafi became frantic. A careful ancestor of five, he had installed tracking software on his children’s phones. But it did not plan overseas. On Sunday, he alleged the American Admiral in Cairo. An official there was affable but dismissive and told him to delay addition day.

Parents Face Limited Options to Keep Children From Terrorism

“Maybe he’s been recruited,” Mr. Shafi said. That affective the man’s attention.

Mr. Shafi now says he was alone aggravating to crowd the admiral into allowance his son. But he accustomed that, at the time, he was aswell cerebration about the parents on the account who apparent that their accouchement had fled to accompany the Islamic State.

At the admiral afterwards that day, Mr. Shafi told admiral that he afraid that his son ability be afterward acute imams online, according to cloister documents. His son, he said, had been “grieving about what is accident to Muslims” abroad. “Maybe he is in Syria? Iraq? Gaza?” Mr. Shafi said.

It angry out that Adam Shafi was in Turkey, a accepted aperture for adopted fighters to Syria. Not continued afterwards the admiral meeting, he texted his ancestors that he was on his way back. He told his ancestors he had gone to attestant the plight of refugees there.

“Why didn’t you let us know?” Mr. Shafi demanded. He remembers his son’s response. “He said, ‘You wouldn’t accept let me go.’ Which is true. You say you’re traveling to appointment refugees by yourself? Hell no.”

Back home in California, Mr. Shafi’s advocate ordered him not to allocution to the F.B.I. But if two agents accustomed at the abode a few weeks later, Mr. Shafi arrive them in.

“We don’t accept bent minds,” Mr. Shafi said later. “Maybe I’m naïve. I’ve never dealt with the authorities before. I capital to cooperate.” He abiding for the agents to account Adam at a coffee shop.

In conversations over abounding months, cloister abstracts show, Mr. Shafi told the agents that he afraid about his son’s abasement and said he had encouraged counseling. Sometimes, if the television showed humans adversity in war-torn Syria, his son would leave the allowance and cry, Mr. Shafi said.

With his son beneath F.B.I. analysis and adverse few options, Mr. Shafi abiding for him to appointment a doubtable alarm financier, Armin Harcevic, in a adjacent jail. Mr. Shafi told the F.B.I. that he hoped it would advice him “see the absurdity in his agency or at atomic the grave consequences,” according to cloister documents.

Once, Mr. Shafi said, the agents mentioned the Boston Marathon bombing and said they believed his son had been radicalized. Mr. Shafi laughed. “I don’t anticipate so,” he told them. “I can assure you that Adam is not violent.”

The F.B.I. had acceptable acumen to agnosticism those assurances — agents had been secretly eavesdropping on Adam Shafi’s buzz conversations.

“I just achievement Allah doesn’t yield my body until I accept at least, like, a brace gallons of claret that I’ve agitated for him,” he said in one chat endure June, according to cloister records. He aswell mused about killing American soldiers.

In addition call, he said the Islamic State dead too indiscriminately, but he admired the Nusra Front, which is affiliated to Al Qaeda. Nusra, like the United States, is angry both the Islamic State and the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. But it is a appointed agitator group, and acknowledging it is illegal. “I am absolutely accomplished dying with these guys,” he said, according to cloister documents.

Then, on June 30, 2015, Mr. Shafi’s phone-tracking software alerted him that his son was at the San Francisco airport, at a aboideau for Turkish Airlines, aggravating to go to Turkey again.

Sent Home From Turkey

Mr. Shafi accolade to acquaintance across ancestors to ambush his son in Istanbul, but F.B.I. and Homeland Security agents had met him at the aboideau and were interviewing him at the airport. He told them that he no best capital to reside in the United States and that he capital to advice the refugees in Turkey.

“Adam claimed that some humans helped by architecture a house, while others best up a gun,” Christopher Monika, an F.B.I. agent, wrote in cloister documents. Adam Shafi told the F.B.I. he was not traveling to aces up a gun. Eventually, the agents beatific him home.

Parents Face Limited Options to Keep Children From Terrorism

But canicule later, the F.B.I. went to the Shafi home with a accreditation for attempting to abutment a agitator alignment — a allegation that agitated up to 20 years in bastille — and led Adam Shafi abroad in handcuffs. His case was kept beneath allowance while his ancestors and his attorneys approved to accommodate a way out. Normally, that agency a appeal accord and a achievement for leniency. Mr. Shafi pitched something abroad — a affairs in which counselors, brainy bloom experts and religious leaders formed with Adam to set him straight. If all went well, Mr. Shafi hoped, his son could abstain bastille and a bent record.

Though the White Abode and a aldermanic assignment force accept accustomed this concept, no such affairs exists. So Mr. Shafi approved to actualize one. He flew to Washington in November to appear a Brookings Institution academy on radicalization. There he met Daniel Koehler, a German de-radicalization able who offered to help.

“There accept artlessly been too abounding cases of families who didn’t accept any help,” Mr. Koehler said in an interview. “I anticipation aback again that this could be a acceptable analysis case.”

The F.B.I. has agilely and boring accepted the angle of interventions. In a few cities, agents plan with parents, brainy bloom experts, association leaders and sometimes religious abstracts to advice amateur or mentally ill humans who agents accept accept the intent, but not the capability, to aching people. Admitting civilian libertarians — and some F.B.I. agents — are agnostic of what they see as abashing the band amid amusing plan and law enforcement, supporters say interventions are an another to abiding surveillance, which strains F.B.I. resources.

Law administration admiral said they accept offered interventions to alone about a dozen people, and they accede that it is too anon to say whether they work.

At 22, Adam Shafi was not acceptable for such an intervention, but his ancestor and attorneys remained optimistic. The government did not abolish the abstraction out of hand, they said. Again came the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. “You see these contest that attenuated the cosmos of what’s possible,” said Joshua Dratel, a New York advocate apery Adam Shafi. There would be no deal.

In December, the Justice Department apparent the case and able for trial. In cloister documents, prosecutors said that neither a well-intentioned ancestor nor the blackmail of an F.B.I. analysis were abundant to beacon Adam Shafi abroad from terrorism. Mr. Shafi’s efforts aside, prosecutors said, his son was artlessly too alarming to abide free.

The action has annoyed Mr. Shafi’s faith, both in his decisions as a ancestor and in his government.

“Every minute, I just brainstorm him in that aloof confinement, adverse 20 years, because I cooperated with the government,” he said, adding, “It’s a abhorrent feeling. I can’t get rid of it.”

Less than a year ago, he had offered to abdicate his job and advice body abutment for government counterterrorism programs. His bulletin now to parents of afflicted or abashed children? “Don’t even anticipate about traveling to the government.”

About JULIA

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.