CHICAGO _ Authorities are investigating whether a Bolingbrook woman was involved in a male relative's alleged plot to kill an out-of-state federal judge presiding over his terrorism-related case, a search warrant made public Friday revealed.
Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 38, was indicted last year on federal charges that accused him and three other men of conspiring to send money and other assistance to a Qaida leader in 2009.
Last month, while still awaiting trial, Mohammad was indicted on further charges alleging he tried to hired a hit man to kidnap and murder U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary of the Northern District of Ohio.
According to the indictment, Mohammad told a fellow inmate in the Lucas County jail he wanted to pay $15,000 for the judge to be kidnapped and killed. That inmate informed authorities and an undercover FBI agent was enlisted to pose as a hit man, federal officials said.
In an April 26 recorded conversation, after the undercover agent asked Mohammad when he should carry out the murder, Mohammad allegedly responded, "The sooner would be good, you know."
Mohammad allegedly arranged for a relative to pay the FBI agent a down payment of $1,000. The undercover agent met the woman May 5 outside a Bolingbrook postal facility and she gave him 10 bills of $100 in a white envelope, the federal search warrant said.
The two met again May 16, when the undercover agent showed the woman a photo with a "doctored image portraying (the judge) deceased with multiple gunshot wounds to the head," the document stated. He demanded payment.
Mohammad was charged with attempted first-degree murder of a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire, records show. His relative has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Federal authorities said Friday they continue to investigate whether she was involved in the alleged plot.
Her attorney, Christopher Grohman, said the woman believed the $1,000 payment was for a business investment that her relative asked her to pursue on his behalf. Grohman said the woman, after seeing the doctored photo of the allegedly slain judge, immediately called her attorney, who notified federal authorities.
The woman did not make any incriminating statements to suggest she was in on the plot during secretly recorded conversations she had with Mohammad and the undercover FBI agent who posed as the hit man, her attorney said.
Zouhary has since recused himself from the original case in which Mohammad was accused of attempting to fund al-Qaida.
Attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin represents Mohammad in both cases. He said the United Arab Emirates-born man had studied electrical engineering as a graduate student at Ohio State University. It's unclear whether Mohammad ever lived in the Chicago area. Grohman said the woman has been living with her three children in a relative's Bolingbrook home since Mohammad's 2015 arrest.
According to a May 18 federal search warrant, made public Friday, special agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Chicago searched the house, computers and all other electronic devices such as cellphones and tablets as part of their investigation.
The jailhouse informant who helped federal authorities ensnare Mohammad in the murder-for-hire plot has an extensive criminal history with a pending weapons charge and is serving a 40-year prison term for child porn-related charges, according to the search warrant.
Prosecutors said he was not promised a possible reduction of his sentence in exchange for his help.
Still, Durkin was skeptical of the man's reliability. Durkin also represents Adel Daoud, a young Hillside man accused of soliciting the murder of an undercover FBI agent after his arrest in 2012 on charges he plotted to detonate a car bomb outside a Loop bar.
"All I can say now is that it is interesting the government once again (like Adel Daoud) has stooped to using a notorious jailhouse informant to devise an absurdly convoluted plot that makes little to no practical sense," Durkin said.
