In a case that took ten years to resolve, a Bowling Green man has been convicted of several terrorism-related charges at U.S. District Court in Louisville, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky announced on Wednesday.

Mirsad Hariz Adem Ramic, 34, was found guilty of providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (“ISIS”), conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and receiving military type training from ISIS. ISIS, a Salafi-jihadist group that conducts notorious terrorist attacks worldwide, that has been designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. Secretary of State since 2004.

According to public filings and the evidence presented at trial, on June 3, 2014, Ramic and two co-conspirators coordinated their departure from the United States, arriving separately in Istanbul, Turkey, abandoning the rest of their purchased travel itineraries in order to purchase tickets to fly to Gaziantep, Turkey. Gaziantep is located near the Turkey-Syrian border, and from there, Ramic and the two co-conspirators crossed into Syria and joined ISIS.

Prosecutors say after joining ISIS, Ramic attended an ISIS training camp, where he received military type training. A Photograph of Ramic, posted on social media, depicted him, among other things, wearing camouflage clothing and standing in front of a truck outfitted with an anti-aircraft gun and the ISIS flag.

Ramic and his co-conspirators remained in contact with each other and discussed, among other things, his use of an anti-aircraft weapon to shoot at planes. Ramic and his co-conspirators also discussed jihad, martyrdom and fighting for ISIS. Ramic, a dual U.S.-Bosnian citizen, joined an ISIS fighting unit comprised primarily of Bosnian foreign fighters, and participated in ISIS’s offensive in Kobane, Syria.

Ramic has been in federal custody since December 2021, after being deported to the United States from Turkey, where he had reportedly been held in prison.

Ramic is scheduled to be sentenced before Chief Judge Greg Stivers on September 24, where he faces a statutory maximum penalty of 50 years in prison, a fine of $750,000 and term of supervised release up to life. The court will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

The FBI investigated the matter, while Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua Judd and Christopher Tieke of the Western District of Kentucky, along with Trial Attorneys Kevin Nunnally and Jessica Fender of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section prosecuted the case.