Man Who Attempted to Provide Material Support to ISIS Sentenced to 16 Years in Federal Prison

Miami, Florida – A federal district judge in Miami has sentenced Jonathan Guerra Blanco, a/k/a “Abu Zahra Al-Andalusi,” a Cuban-born naturalized United States citizen, to 16 years’ imprisonment and a lifetime of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization. 

In 2019, law enforcement officers learned that Guerra Blanco was following widely distributed instructions from ISIS directing adherents to -- on their own -- publish ISIS propaganda, fundraising requests, recruitment material, justification for attacks on the United States, and all manner of material helpful to ISIS.  Guerra Blanco attempted to provide material support to ISIS by translating the group’s materials into Spanish for his target audience.  In addition, Guerra Blanco produced videos that he intended to use to recruit Spanish speakers to ISIS’s cause, as well as to terrorize regular citizens of Spain.  Many of the videos that Guerra Blanco produced and distributed from his two ISIS media networks glorified the terrorist group’s violence and called for attacks on Spanish authorities.

On December 22, 2020, Guerra Blanco pled guilty to a one-count information charging him with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, ISIS, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B.  U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr. imposed Guerra Blanco’s sentence.

Juan Antonio Gonzalez, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami, made the announcement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Gilbert and National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section Trial Attorney Kevin Nunnally prosecuted the case.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 20-cr-20245.

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