{"id":33193,"date":"2025-11-08T17:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/33193\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T17:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:56:08","slug":"one-of-the-nj-jihadi-yuppies-was-football-prospect-at-manhattan-catholic-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/33193\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the NJ jihadi yuppies was football prospect at Manhattan Catholic high school"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the alleged Jersey boy jihadis<\/a> charged with attempting to provide support to ISIS after ranting about beheading infidels and attacking Jews was once an aspiring football prospect at a posh Catholic high school in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Tomas Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, 19, who was arrested on Nov. 4 at Newark Airport<\/a> while trying to flee to Turkey, attended Chelsea\u2019s $26,460-a-year Xavier High School for freshman year before transferring to Montclair High School where he studied alongside Milo Sedarat<\/a>, who was also arrested for attempting to provide material support to the terror group.<\/p>\n

Xavier High School acknowledged the connection and decried the alleged radicalization of Jimenez-Guzel in a letter sent out Friday to the community, which was obtained by The Post.<\/p>\n

Guzel said in an online profile he \u201cstrived\u201d to be a star football player. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cTomas transferred out of Xavier early in his sophomore year. During his time at Xavier, he played football and showed no signs of the activity and behaviors for which he was arrested,\u201d President Jack Raslowsky wrote. <\/p>\n

President Raslowsky told The Post Jimenez-Guzel chose to leave the school and was not tossed for disciplinary or academic reasons.<\/p>\n

The letter was circulated to the school community after photos published by The Post showed Jimenez-Guzel wearing a shirt with the Xavier logo alongside his mother, Meral Guzel, from the school\u2019s Mother-Son Mass in the 2021-2022 school year, Xavier officials said.<\/p>\n

Meral has been the head of the United Nations Women\u2019s Entrepreneurship Program for 10 years and previously held banking and finance jobs, according to her LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

Online profiles that apparently belong to Jimenez-Guzel showed the gridiron highlights of the 6\u20192\u201d, 230-pound, defensive end.<\/p>\n

Guzel played high school football. hudl<\/p>\n

One video posted<\/a> to platform Hudl in 2022 showed him taking down a running back with a clothesline as he topples the lineman who was trying to block.<\/p>\n

In another online profile for NCSA College Recruiting<\/a>, Jimenez-Guzel claimed that he wanted to eventually play in the National Football League.<\/p>\n

\u201cI work my hardest day and night to be the star player I strive to become, as well as a better man,\u201d the profile stated.<\/p>\n

Jimenez-Guzel is alleged to have planned to wage jihad abroad with another \u201cNew Jersey-based\u201d individual in a group chat, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

The school acknowledged its connection to Guzel \u2014 and decried his alleged behavior.<\/p>\n

In that chat, he boasted that he wanted to commit an atrocity that would \u201cleave a mark in history\u201d allow him to be considered \u201cone of the most 100 evil people in the world,\u201d court documents alleged.<\/p>\n

One photo released by federal investigators allegedly showed Jimenez-Guzel posing in front of an ISIS flag and holding a knife.<\/p>\n

Milo Sedarat, 19, the son of famed Iranian poet Roger Sedarat, also attended Montclair High School and allegedly planned to carry out a \u201cBoston bombing-like attack,\u201d federal law enforcement officials alleged.<\/p>\n

The privileged teen said he wanted to execute \u201c500 Jews\u201d and turn their wives and children into slaves, according to feds.<\/p>\n

Both Guzel-Jimenez and Sedarat are facing charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempted conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the alleged Jersey boy jihadis charged with attempting to provide support to ISIS after ranting about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6300,11182,13057,75,84,83,1066,9,24,63,3694,58,19861],"class_list":{"0":"post-33193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-catholic","9":"tag-high-schools","10":"tag-isis","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-manhattan-headlines","13":"tag-manhattan-news","14":"tag-new-jersey","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-terrorism","19":"tag-us-news","20":"tag-xavier"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}