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Roanoke, Virginia — A man from Roanoke, Virginia, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and another 15 years of supervised release after he allegedly tried to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in the form of a bomb-making video he later disseminated to a video-sharing website.
According to a report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released Thursday, court documents revealed that Romeo Xavier Langhorne, 32, proclaimed allegiance to ISIS “at some point in 2014,” then “reaffirmed his support for ISIS on various social media accounts, posted ISIS-produced videos to his YouTube account and participated in online ISIS chat rooms with like-minded individuals.”
The DOJ report revealed that Langhorne started communicating with an undercover employee (UCE) with the FBI who posed as an ISIS worker in February 2019. Langhorne reportedly asked the UCE for assistance in creating an instructional video on how to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP), which is a deadly explosive. According to the DOJ report, “Langhorne informed the UCE that his true purpose in making and distributing the video was to arm ISIS adherents and others with knowledge of how to make TATP and use it for terrorism-related purposes in support for ISIS.”
Langhorne received versions of the TATP-making video in November 2019, and he went on to share the videos online. The said videos were produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation based on Langhorne’s instructions. Langhorne was unaware that the explosive-making process in the videos included “a chemical formula for TATP that would not produce an explosion.”
After his arrest in mid-November 2019, Langhorne pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to the ISIS on May 13 last year.
In detention, Langhorne admitted that he had “probably at some point” pledged loyalty to the ISIS and its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
CBS affiliate WUSA 9 reported in 2019 that Langhorne used to troll the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the National Security Agency (NSA) on social media. He also defended the ISIS, the outlet reported.
The ISIS is a “designated foreign terrorist organization.” Think tank Rand Corporation dubbed the ISIS as a “jihadist group with a particularly violent ideology,” adding that the group uses social media to recruit members and raise funds for its operations.
File photo of a prison cell.
Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
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