Former St. Augustine man sentenced to 20 years for trying to help ISIS

A former St. Augustine resident accused of wanting to help ISIS by demonstrating how to make and use an explosive, was sentenced to prison for 20 years, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney's office in the Middle District of Florida.

Romeo Xavier Langhorne, 32, was charged with attempting to provide material to support to a designated foreign terrorist organizations, and was also sentenced Thursday to 15 years of supervised release.

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“The willingness of this dangerous individual to go to great lengths to harm innocent Americans was always very real,” FBI Jacksonville Special Agent in Charge Sherri Onks said in the release. “But through hard work and determination, the FBI Jacksonville Joint Terrorism Task Force successfully disrupted his plan early on, and averted a threat to the safety of our community. Moving forward, we remain as vigilant as ever in our efforts to protect the public from others who support terrorist organizations, and we encourage the public to help us by reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement."

Langhorne pleaded guilty to the charge on May 13, 2021. But his interest in ISIS began drawing the attention of law enforcement years earlier, according to court records.

Federal court documents say Langhorne pledged his allegiance to ISIS at some point in 2014, knowing that it was a designated foreign terrorist organization engaged in terrorism. He reaffirmed his support in 2018 and 2019 on various social media accounts and also posted terrorist group-produced videos to his YouTube, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

In late 2018 and early 2019, while in an online chatroom, he said he wanted to create a video that would show how to make use of a deadly explosive, prosecutors said.

In 2019 Langhorne began communicating with an undercover FBI agent posing as someone working on behalf of ISIS, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Langhorne told the agent he wanted help to create and post the instructional video. He also said the video should have disclaimers that it was intended for educational use so it would not be removed from social media.

Langhorne told the agent his true purpose with the video was to arm ISIS and others with knowledge of how to make bombs and use them for terrorism-related purposes, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The FBI produced a video in accordance with Langhorne’s instructions but didn't tell Langhorne that the formula would never explode if made. In late 2019 the agent gave versions of the bomb-making video to Langhorne, who distributed it on a video-sharing website, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

He was living in St. Augustine when he began providing instructions to the undercover agent, according to the complaint.

FBI surveillance, cited in the complaint, showed Langhorne in St. Augustine on Feb. 4, 2019. On March 16, he was the subject of a suspicious person report in St. Augustine filed with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, the complaint states.

The surveillance documented Langhorne taking five Lyft rides in March throughout the U.S. Middle District of Florida, which has five divisions — Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Ocala, Orlando and Tampa.

On April 9, he relocated to Virginia and was under surveillance in Roanoke where his mother lived, according to the complaint. Langhorne was arrested on Nov. 15, 2019, at his residence in Virginia.

"Langhorne admitted in a post-arrest interview that he had 'probably at some point' pledged allegiance to both ISIS and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was the leader of ISIS from 2014 until his death on Oct. 26, 2019. Langhorne admitted that he communicated with the (undercover agent) and that he uploaded the … video to the internet," according to the release.

The FBI investigated the case with help from partners in the Northeast Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force and support from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol and the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Taylor for the Middle District of Florida and Trial Attorney D. Andrew Sigler of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section prosecuted the case.

“Due to the outstanding cooperation and coordination by our law enforcement partners, great harm to our community was prevented,” U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg said in the release. “I applaud the diligence of those who worked expeditiously to disrupt this threat to our public’s safety.”

― The Florida Times-Union, including Reporter Teresa Stepzinski, contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on St. Augustine Record: Former St. Augustine, Florida man tried to help ISIS make bombs