We will call him, at his request, Ab'dullah.
"My mindset was that basically, anybody who wasn't Muslim was the enemy," Ab'dullah told Action News.
Ab'dullah means slave to Allah and at one point, there was nothing this man was not prepared to do for his faith.
"My job was to assassinate high officials," Ab'dullah said.
That startling statement is the culmination of a long process of what Ab'dullah now calls brainwashing that turned this convert into a would be killer. He was, he says, taught to hate using text from the Qur'an he now says was taken out of context and purposely pumped into a mind eager for understanding.
"We who believe do not take the Jews and the Christians as friends," Ab'dullah said.
In the mid-1990's, Ab'dullah was a self described radical Muslim; he says he was a lost soul who found comfort and company in extremist Islam.
He quickly caught the attention of terrorist recruiters, one of whom made an offer Ab'dullah says his religious fervor made impossible to refuse.
"He told me that there would be a 3 month tour, that my family would be taken care of. And that if I met my demise there that my family would be taken care of for the rest of their lives, and that, of course, I'd be a martyr," Ab'dullah said.
That tour was to take him to Bosnia. But first would come the training to a so-called safe house in Brooklyn then to Upstate New York where he was taught techniques to kill. But what made him want to kill? He says a barrage of images that added fuel to the fire within.
"I saw photos of them taking Muslims, tying them to mast ships with tires, and setting them on fire and things of this nature, so that only enraged me even further," Ab'dullah explained.
Ab'dullah, though, would never get the chance to exact revenge. Targeted by the FBI in the mid-1990's, he was arrested and jailed, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, connected to a plot he describes like this:
"The attempt to blow up the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge and the FBI building."
When asked if he feels ashamed, Ab'dullah said, 'yes,' because he has now matured.
"This has many of the elements of the kind of profile, the kind of individual that's being recruited," said terrorism expert Ed Turzanski of LaSalle University.
Turzanski says Ab'dullah's story may be astounding, but it's not unique. In fact, he says recruitment in America is on the rise, a sentiment echoed by the FBI.
"The cases are out there. The threat is real," said J.J. Klaver, FBI spokesperson. "We have cases here that show the successes of our efforts. We need to be successful every day, though."
Klaver elaborates the FBI needs to be successful against shadowy extremists luring recruits with the same promises told to Ab'dallah.
Ab'dullah now wants others, like the man he was, to know just how empty those promises are and how peaceful his faith really is.
To them, he says: "You hear this kind of rhetoric, it's time to run."
Ab'dullah continues to live in Philadelphia, and though he told Action News, he is a changed man, the FBI says he's likely still being watched. And in at least one way, he hopes he is watched by others who may find themselves recruited and who might seem as a reason to refuse those empty offers.
