AKIPRESS.COM - Two young men living in Brooklyn were arrested on Wednesday and charged with plotting to travel thousands of miles to fight under the banner of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, the U.S. Department of Justice said 25 February.

A third Brooklyn man was charged with helping organize and fund their activities.

The men have been identified as Abdurasul Juraboev, 24, a citizen of Uzbekistan; Akhror Saidakhmetov, 19, a citizen of Kazakhstan; and Abror Habibov, 30, a citizen of Uzbekistan.

Juraboev worked in a gyro shop, Saidakhmetov worked at cellphone repair kiosks owned by the third man charged Abror Habibov. Juraboev and Saidakhmetov had become permanent United States residents, but all of them remained citizens of their native countries.

One of the men was arrested at Kennedy Airport, where the US government says he was trying to board a flight to Istanbul and then planned to travel to Syria to join the battle.

At least two of the men had threatened to carry out attacks on targets in the United States, including planting a bomb in Coney Island and killing President Obama, if they failed in their attempt to travel overseas, according to the government. But their threats of violence had an “aspirational” quality to them, according to law enforcement officials, with no indication that the suspects were close to staging an attack, large or small.

Charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, Mr. Juraboev and Mr. Saidakhmetov, appeared in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday afternoon. Habibov faces the same charge. He appeared on Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Jacksonville, Fla., where he operates one of his cellphone repair kiosks.

The court documents show young men driven to travel thousands of miles to the Middle East after clashing at home with family members they considered infidels. One of the young men had his passport taken away by his mother, who had grown concerned about his behavior.