A Westland Basement. A Bomb Lab. Twenty Years.
- 20 yearsfederal sentenceimposed May 7, 2026 by U.S. District Judge Jonathan J.C. Grey · Eastern District of Michigan · DOJ press release
- 2 countsof convictionattempting to provide material support to ISIS + felon in possession of a destructive device · jury verdict June 3, 2025
- 2012–2017span of criminal conducttwo attempted departures to join ISIS (2012–2013) · bomb lab found in Westland basement (Oct 2017)
- TATPprecursor chemicals foundacetone, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide — three key TATP ingredients — recovered by FBI from Naser's basement lab
On May 7, 2026, a federal judge in Detroit sentenced Aws Mohammed Naser, 38, of Westland, Michigan, to 20 years in federal prison for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and for being a felon in possession of a destructive device. The sentence followed a unanimous jury verdict in June 2025, delivered after a five-week trial in the Eastern District of Michigan. It is one of the longest ISIS-related sentences ever handed down in Michigan — in a state that has seen an alarming cluster of homegrown Islamist extremism cases over the past decade.
The case spans more than a decade of documented radicalization: a 2012 trip to Iraq with a Salafi-Jihadist associate, two thwarted attempts to fly to Syria to join ISIS, a gas-station robbery to fund the second attempt, and — years later — a basement laboratory stocked with the precursor chemicals for TATP, a military-grade improvised explosive. What kept Naser in Michigan was not a change of heart. It was a criminal record that made crossing borders impossible.
The FBI Detroit Field Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan prosecuted the case. DOJ confirmed the sentence in a press release the same day.
The jury deliberated approximately six hours before returning its verdict on June 3, 2025. The verdict was unanimous on both counts. On the material-support count, jurors found that Naser twice attempted to provide ISIS with personnel — including himself — and services, knowing that ISIS was a designated foreign terrorist organization and that it engages in terrorism. On the destructive-device count, jurors found that Naser possessed the device despite being a convicted felon.
Nearly eleven months later, on May 7, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jonathan J.C. Grey imposed the 20-year sentence. Federal prison sentences run without the possibility of parole under federal sentencing guidelines. Court records place the case in the Eastern District of Michigan, prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office and supported by the FBI's Detroit Field Office and the Department of Justice's National Security Division.
“A jury unanimously found that Aws Mohammed Naser twice attempted to provide material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that ISIS engages in terrorism.”
FBI Detroit Field Office · @FBIDetroit · May 7, 2026
The 20-year sentence stands well above the national average. According to data cited by the Detroit News in its sentencing coverage, at least 222 people have been sentenced in the United States for ISIS-related activity over the past dozen years, with an average sentence of 12 years. Court officials in Michigan identified just three other cases in the state involving sentences of comparable severity.
Trial evidence presented a radicalization timeline that began in Naser's early 20s. Prosecutors described a man who frequented extremist online networks, posted Salafi-Jihadist content to his YouTube channel, and cultivated a close relationship with Russell Dennison, a Florida man with aspirations of becoming a Jihadist preacher. In early 2012, the two traveled together to Iraq — ostensibly to observe, but in the context of the regional conflict then metastasizing from al-Qaeda in Iraq into what would become the Islamic State.
In August 2012, Naser returned to Michigan. Dennison did not. He traveled to Syria and joined Al-Nusrah Front, an Islamic State of Iraq affiliate and a recognized precursor to ISIS. By November 2012, Naser had booked his own flight. He arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport carrying luggage that contained a rifle scope, a cane sword, and a four-inch tactical knife — items, prosecutors argued, intended for use in Syria. He was denied boarding.
Undeterred, Naser made a second attempt in January 2013. Hours before a one-way flight from Chicago O'Hare Airport to Beirut, Lebanon, he robbed a gas station — reportedly for travel money. He then boarded a bus to Chicago and arrived at the departure gate with $2,000 in cash. He was denied boarding again and returned to Michigan. He was later convicted of the robbery and served a state prison sentence, being released on parole in 2016.
In October 2017, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Naser's Westland, Michigan home. What they found in his basement made the case federal. Agents documented a bomb-making laboratory stocked with multiple drones, drone parts, precision tools, and a ready-to-assemble destructive device containing precursor chemicals for TATP — triacetone triperoxide, the same explosive favored by ISIS in the 2015 Paris attacks and the 2016 Brussels bombings. The three key TATP precursors — acetone, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide — were all present in Naser's lab.
TATP (triacetone triperoxide) is a primary explosive synthesized from widely available commercial chemicals. It is highly sensitive to shock, heat, and friction, making it difficult to handle — and favored by terrorist operatives precisely because the precursor chemicals are not individually controlled. ISIS deployed TATP in the Paris attacks (November 2015), the Brussels attacks (March 2016), and the Manchester Arena bombing (May 2017). The FBI's discovery of TATP precursors in a ready-to-assemble configuration, alongside drones, in a suburban Michigan basement elevated the Naser investigation from a prior-travel case to an active domestic threat.
The 2017 search also revealed the breadth of Naser's covert online activity. As a convicted felon barred from leaving the country, he had shifted from attempting physical travel to a digital support role. Investigators documented his membership in invitation-only ISIS supporters' chatrooms and private online rooms where he accessed official ISIS media, publications, and propaganda. He also created social-media accounts to spread pro-ISIS content to a broader audience.
“Naser built a makeshift bomb lab in the basement of his Westland home. He is a bombmaker. And the FBI found key ingredients for an improvised explosive device.”
Federal prosecutors · Eastern District of Michigan · trial evidence, as reported by ClickOnDetroit and Detroit News
NEWS ALERT from @FBIDetroit: Michigan Man Sentenced to 20 years in Prison After Having Been Convicted of Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS and Possessing a Destructive Device. A jury unanimously found that Aws Mohammed Naser twice attempted to provide material support to ISIS…
Aws Mohammed Naser, 38, of Westland, MI, sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and possession of a destructive device. He twice attempted to travel to Syria to join ISIS and constructed a bomb lab in his basement. Full details: justice.gov
GUILTY: Aws Mohammed Naser of Westland, Michigan sentenced to 20 YEARS in federal prison for ISIS material support and possessing a bomb lab in his basement. TATP precursors, drones, and IED components found. This is the America First DOJ at work. Justice served.
The same metro Detroit that elected sanctuary-friendly politicians had a man building a TATP bomb lab in Westland for years. FBI Detroit finally got him. 20 years. The suburbs aren't immune. Stay vigilant.
The Naser sentence lands in a state that has become a recurring dateline in federal counterterrorism filings. Michigan — and the Detroit metro area in particular — has produced a disproportionate share of ISIS-related cases in the United States since ISIS declared its caliphate in 2014. The Naser case is one of the most serious given the bomb-lab evidence, but it is far from isolated.
The pattern accelerated in 2025. In May 2025, Ammar Said was arrested after months of planning a mass-shooting attack at the U.S. Army's Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) facility in Warren, Michigan — an ISIS-directed operation disrupted by FBI undercover agents. In October 2025, the FBI arrested at least five suspects between 16 and 20 years old in Dearborn who had been spiraling through ISIS propaganda videos and chatrooms for months, ultimately targeting Halloween festivities in what prosecutors described as an attempt to replicate the 2015 Paris attacks on American soil. In July 2025, Jibreel Pratt of Detroit pleaded guilty to two counts of concealing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
All of these cases run through the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, which covers Detroit, Flint, Ann Arbor, and the broader southeast corner of the state — the population center where virtually every Michigan ISIS prosecution has originated. The office works in coordination with the FBI Detroit Field Office and DOJ's National Security Division in Washington. Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) makes it a crime to knowingly provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Maximum sentence: 20 years — the exact ceiling Judge Grey imposed on Naser.
Aws Mohammed Naser spent more than a decade trying to serve ISIS. When he couldn't get out of the country, he built a bomb lab in a Westland basement. A federal jury convicted him. A federal judge gave him the statutory maximum — 20 years. The national average for an ISIS-related sentence is 12 years. Michigan has now produced enough ISIS cases in a single decade that prosecutors can draw a pattern. The Naser sentence is a data point in that pattern, not an exception.