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Davud Ansariy, 41, was extradited from Tbilisi, Georgia, to New York on September 23 to face charges that he led a Brooklyn network that funded would-be fighters for ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced on September 24.
Ansariy is a citizen of Uzbekistan and a naturalized US citizen who also used the names Kozimjon Gafurov and Kozim. He was arrested in Georgia in August 2026. He was due to be arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn on one count of conspiring to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations and one count of providing that support.
According to court filings, Ansariy led a group of radicalized people based mainly in Brooklyn. Some members planned to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS or al-Nusrah, while others paid for the travel of aspiring fighters. Participants called the group "chayxona," an Uzbek word that translates to tea house or tea party.
Prosecutors say the collections also supported the families that fighters left behind, including widows and relatives of men killed in the fighting. The network funded the travel of at least three people to Syria in 2013. All three are believed to have been killed there.
Ansariy left the United States for Turkey in May 2016 on a one-way ticket he had bought the day before. His departure came five days after one of his co-conspirators was arrested. A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted him in November 2021, and he did not return to the United States until his extradition this week.
The arrest and transfer were secured with help from the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, the FBI Law Enforcement Attaché office in Tbilisi and the Prosecutor's Office of Georgia. FBI New York Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said the case sends a message to supporters of the groups that "they can run, but they cannot hide from the FBI."
The prosecution is being handled by the office's National Security and Cybercrime Section, with support from the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section. If convicted, Ansariy faces up to 35 years in prison. The charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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