Daniela Greene, a former employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, served two years in prison after she fled to Syria to marry an Islamic State group (ISIS) terrorist, who she was ordered to investigate, according to a report by Fox News, Tuesday.
Greene, who was a contractual linguist fluent in German, was employed at the agency’s Detroit division and went on to serve two years for lying to FBI officials and sneaking into Syria to be with Denis Cusper, initially identified in the court documents obtained by the publication as “Individual A,” in June 2014.
Cuspert was a German rapper, who initially used the name Deso Dogg, but went on to call himself Abu Talha al-Almani after he moved to Syria. After joining ISIS in 2012, he used his previous experiences to rise to be one of the biggest recruiters and appeared in a number of videos for the terrorist organization.
“Cuspert was a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for ISIL who used social media to take advantage of disaffected youth and potential Western recruits,” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith told the publication in an earlier statement.
Greene knew about Cuspert’s role in the terrorist organization but decided to go be with him anyway. Stating that she was taking some “vacation/personal” time, Greene told her FBI supervisor and chief security officer that she was flying to visit her family in Germany.
Instead of taking a flight to Germany, she bought a one-way flight to Istanbul, Turkey on June 23, 2014, from where she reportedly traveled to Gaziantep, about 20 miles from the Syrian border and contacted the ISIS recruiter.
The two were married on June 27, 2014 and the former employee of the FBI warned Cuspert about the agency’s investigations targeting him. However, Greene soon realized that she “had committed a criminal act,” ending the marriage in just about a month, the court documents obtained by Fox News show.
“I was weak and didn’t know how to handle anything anymore. I really made a mess of things this time,” she wrote in one of three emails to an unidentified individual in the U.S. In another mail, she wrote, “I am in Syria. Sometimes I wish I could just come back. I wouldn’t even know how to make it through, if I tried to come back.”
In her third email, Greene said she knew she would have to be in “prison for a long time if [she] comes back,” but ultimately returned to the U.S. on Aug. 6, 2014, following which she was arrested immediately. After pleading guilty, Greene signed an agreement to cooperate with government officials.
Greene was released from prison in August 2016, the same year when it was confirmed by Pentagon officials that Cuspert had survived a 2015 airstrike, in which he had been reported dead. Greene currently works as a hostess in a cocktail lounge and told CNN: “If I talk to you my family will be in danger.”
