Justin Nojan Sullivan: a young son and a convicted terrorist

Justin Nojan Sullivan, stood seemingly emotionless as a federal court judge handed him a life sentence on June 27, 2017. It was for a crime, which must be as especially devastating and shocking as any possible offense an American boy could be charged with – Terrorism.

It is a sight no parent, even in their wildest nightmares, would ever want to behold. To witness a child, their child standing, clad in a prison jumpsuit, and preparing to receive his punishment in a court of law. Added to the pain, is the knowledge that it was a phone call from them that eventually led to his arrest. Justin Nojan Sullivan, stood seemingly emotionless as a federal court judge handed him a life sentence on June 27, 2017. It was for a crime, which must be as especially devastating and shocking as any possible offense an American boy could be charged with – Terrorism.

Justin became only the second American to be given a life sentence for attempting to give material support and carry out a planned terrorist attack on behalf of the Islamic State. The first came in April of 2017, when Harlem Suarez was given a life sentence for buying a bomb for the purpose of blowing up a beach in the Florida Keys. For now, Rich Sullivan, father of Justin and a former U.S. Marine captain, had to watch as his son was now placed in the same category as Suarez, the same category as scores of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, the same category as those committing atrocities across the Middle East, and more recently in Western Europe.

Rich Sullivan gave his son a wave as Justin was escorted out of the courtroom by officers to be sent off to prison, where he will likely spend the rest of his life, all with the knowledge that it was his tip that led FBI investigators to his doorstep. Justin’s mother Eleanor could do nothing more than sob, as any loving mother rightly would. When Rich Sullivan was asked about the verdict and sentence his son received, he said, “As parents, we’re not happy.” and “As Americans, we accept what just happened,”  as reported by the Charlotte Observer’s Michael Gordon. These are heartfelt words from a man who served his country in the U.S. Marine Corp.

Justin’s plan, according to Acting Assistant Attorney General Dana J. Boente, was “to execute acts of mass violence in the United States in the name of ISIS.” Sullivan was “actively planning the mass killing of innocent people with an attack designed to inflict maximum casualties.” The details of Sullivan’s plan seemed to mimic the horrific Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida just over a year ago by Omar Mateen, another man who pledged the same allegiance to ISIS as Sullivan But Justin’s idea was meant to be far more deadly. According to investigators he planned to use a homemade silencer, which he found descriptions on how to make online, to kill more and to ultimately get away with it to kill again.

Justin Sullivan’s boyish brown eyes and light mustache hid his true darkness, even to reporters and onlookers at the courthouse. There was extensive plotting and collusion that had gone into his plan as he communicated his intentions to now-deceased Syrian terrorist Junaid Hussain, the man who recruited Justin through social media and where the two discussed videotaping the attack to be broadcasted across the Internet. According to federal investigators, Justin Sullivan also “expressed his wish to create a new branch of the so-called Islamic State in the United States.”

It seems unthinkable that a young man, only 21 at the time of his sentencing, from the rural stretches of Morganton, North Carolina where the Sullivans made their home, would turn to such extremes against his family and his country. Justin even attempted to garner more cohorts when, unbeknownst to him, Sullivan befriended an undercover FBI agent, who Justin wanted to actively involve in such endeavors as building the silencer he planned to use on his terrorist killing spree. According to the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge, John A. Strong, Sullivan, “believed as many as 1,000 people would be killed using the assault rifle and silencer.”

Justin’s case may serve as a stark warning for all parents, like Rich and Eleanor Sullivan, who may have a son or daughter that spends time, like many millennials, online, and on social media, which is where the young man reportedly converted to Islam in 2014. This is where he was first engaged by Junaid Hussain, a highly adept ISIS cyber-recruiter and propagandist, who was killed in Syria in 2015 in an airstrike. Hussain, prior to his death served time in the U.K. for hacking and who used propaganda, like calling for the raising of the ISIS flag at 10 Downing Street and the White House, to entice more young recruits like Justin.

Before long, Justin Sullivan was in chat rooms spewing hatred for his country and spouting off incessantly about jihad. And when Justin began destroying religious symbols in his parents’ home, according to investigators, this was perhaps when Rich and Eleanor were becoming convinced that something was going horribly wrong. Their son, who many of Justin’s neighbors described as shy and socially awkward, was becoming someone they likely did not recognize.

Justin was downloading vicious ISIS-led attacks and even beheadings onto his laptop. He expressed support for ISIS openly at home, which likely filled his parents with a mixture of anger, horror, and dread. And then when his parents found a silencer hidden in a crawl space in their home, and believing his parents would turn him in, Justin even planned to have them killed. He even tried to solicit the undercover agent he befriended with promises of compensation to do the job. However, Justin was correct about one thing, his parents did turn him in. Rich Sullivan contacted the FBI and alerted them to his son’s behaviors and activities in the Spring of 2015.

Everything that transpired, from the point when Justin first expressed an interest, and then a liking for the cause of the Islamic State, to planning and obtaining material for his attack, though his trial, to him being sentenced to life in prison, led to this, the most painful of moments, where Rich and Eleanor Sullivan had to see their son handcuffed, shackled, and taken away. Justin Sullivan will forevermore be labeled a traitor to his country, and though he, will always be the son of Rich and Eleanor Sullivan, Justin will be forever stamped with the moniker synonymous with evil itself – Terrorist.