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Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced yesterday that an Israeli man has been arrested and charged with planning to travel to Syria to fight with ISIS.

40-year-old Valentin Vladimir Mazalevsky was arrested in early February in a joint Shin Bet operation with the Israel Police. Mazalevsky had immigrated to Israel from Belarus in 1996, but converted to Islam in 2000 after meeting his wife, an Israeli Arab from the northern town of Shibli, during his service in the Israeli army.

The Shin Bet said in a statement that Mazalevsky “was active in an online Islamic State support group” and used his contacts from the group to plan his travel to Syria. He purchased a one-way ticket to Turkey with the intention of crossing the border into Syria.

In yesterday’s statement, the Shin Bet said that it “views the departure of Israelis to Syria and Iraq as a very dangerous phenomenon” and that ISIS supporters in Israel are “a severe security threat” who will be dealt with using “all counter-terrorist and preventive means”.

Police summoned Mazalevsky for questioning in July 2016 and warned him that ISIS is an illegal organisation. The Police said that he decided months later to join ISIS in Syria and communicated with ISIS agents via encrypted messages.

YNet quotes Mazalevsky’s family, saying that the allegations against him are “lies” and that he “doesn’t pose a threat to anyone and he has no connection to ISIS”.

There have been a number of previous cases of Israeli citizens affiliating with, and acting on behalf of, ISIS. Last month, a 35-year-old man from the central Arab town of Taibe was arrested, after pledging allegiance to ISIS and subsequently being instructed to carry out attacks.

In 2016, a mother of five from Shfaram was sentenced to a 22-month prison sentence for attempting to join ISIS. An Israeli citizen from Umm al-Fahm is reported to have been killed in a US-led bombing raid in Syria last March.