An American-Irish citizen who traveled to Lebanon and Syria in an attempt to join the Hezbollah terrorist organization and fulfill his desire to kill Jews was arrested on Monday for making false statements to FBI agents, the Western District of Pennsylvania US Attorney’s Office announced.
Jack Danaher Molloy, 24, had converted to Shi’ite Islam in February and traveled to Lebanon in August. According to an affidavit, Molloy was in contact with several individuals who sought to help him with his quest to join Hezbollah. Molloy had difficulty in enlisting with it because he didn’t know Arabic, and the terrorist organization wasn’t recruiting foreigners during the war with Israel in the wake of intelligence failures like the September pager bomb attacks. The American-Irish citizen told an associate that he had been “told very politely that Hezbollah wasn’t recruiting anymore” because “they couldn’t even trust [the] Lebanese at this point” since there were “too many security breaches.”His contact warned him that his attempts to join might “escalate” to the point of him being suspected of being a Mossad agent.
“There are a lot of divisions you can apply for, but right now, they are not recruiting; they’re not accepting anyone due to the high number of Mossad agents and moles appearing inside, sadly, so it’s gonna take a while,” one contact told Molloy.
He was also advised that boot camps and recruiting had been disrupted and that when the current “circumstances” were over, it would take three to four months before the group was organized enough to reopen to recruits.
Beginning training at a 'young age'
An associate explained that Hezbollah operatives started with the organization at a very young age, going on to train at several different locations before being asked if they wished to become official members of the Shi’ite group’s military force. Joining foreign brigades was difficult, requiring current members to vouch for him.
On October 9, Molloy traveled to Syria anyway to try and join Hezbollah or another militia but was told that the dynamics between armed groups in Syria made it “not very ethical” to join some Syrian resistance factions “due to the things that happened in Syria.” Around this time, he told his mother that he was considering joining the Russian forces fighting against Ukraine to earn money, but he answered in the affirmative when his mother asked if his “master plan” was “to join Hezbollah and kill Jews.”On October 14, Molloy left Syria to return to the US, assured by contacts that he would likely be able to join Hezbollah next year. Molloy landed at Pittsburgh International Airport on October 20, where he was questioned by FBI agents and lied about his intentions to join a US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization.
Molloy told an associate that he had enrolled with the Iranian-based online Al-Mustafa Open University, knowing its connection to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the affidavit, the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the university in 2020 because its branches facilitate IRGC Quds Force recruitment of international students.Molloy, who had previously joined the American Reserve Officers’ Training Corps for two months, believed that his Irish background informed his hatred of Zionists and respect for Hezbollah.
In October, he posted on X/Twitter, “We Irish love Hezbollah, and personally, they were a major influence in me converting to Islam and moving to Lebanon.” “To me, I am continuing the fight my great-grandmother fought against the Zionists, but now Islamically,” he said to someone using Google Translate. “I have a very fierce hatred of these Zionists, and I need to fight… I have thought about this every moment of every day since I was 18, for seven years now.” Molloy’s computer and phone contained violent jihadist and Nazi images, including some depicting the execution of Jewish stereotypes. In one image, a character marked with a Nazi swastika shot a Jewish stereotype cartoon, and a similar picture showed a Jew on his knees with a red inverted triangle above his head being shot execution-style in the back of his head. One image on Molloy’s device depicted a Nazi SS soldier and a jihadist with the slogan “one struggle” in English and Arabic. Another displayed Hezbollah fighters performing a Nazi salute with the fusion of a Nazi and Lebanese flag in the backdrop. On the anniversary of October 7, Molloy created an email account called, k**ekiller696969 and, in 2019, used the address glassofjuice88. The latter phrase is a homophone for “gas the Jews,” and the number “88” is a reference to a neo-Nazi numerical code for Heil Hitler. The US Attorney’s Office said that Molloy faces the possibility of a sentence of up to eight years in prison or a $250,000 fine.
