A New York City college student died last November fighting for Islamic State in Syria, where he had traveled earlier in the year with the assistance of an Arizona man he met online, according to U.S. prosecutors. 
 
 The death of Samy Mohammed El-Goarany, who was 24 when he traveled to Syria, was disclosed in papers filed by prosecutors late on Monday in Manhattan federal court in a case against the Arizona man, Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal. 
 
 The details came as prosecutors sought approval to introduce evidence at the Dec. 5 trial of El Gammal, who is charged with conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State by helping El-Goarany travel so he could join the militant group. 
 
 The potential evidence includes a letter by El-Goarany that an unidentified person via an instant messaging platform provided one of El-Goarany's relatives after saying he had been killed fighting in Syria. 
 
 In the letter, El-Goarany informed the relative that "if you're reading this then know that I've been killed in battle and am now with our Lord InshaAllah." 
 
 "We will win this war one day, this war between Iman (Belief) and kufr (Disbelief) between Good and Evil," the letter said, according to prosecutors. "And I will come back for you, with Allah's permission I will come back for you." 
 
 El Gammal's lawyer declined comment. He has pleaded not guilty. 
 
 According to prosecutors, El-Goarany was a U.S. citizen who attended college in Manhattan and who by 2014 began expressing increased interest in militant forms of Islam. 
 
 El-Goarany first contacted El Gammal in August 2014 after learning of online comments he posted supporting Islamic State, prosecutors said. 
 
 They corresponded via encrypted messaging platforms, including one El-Goarany recommended by noting former National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden had used it, prosecutors said. 
 
 They said El Gammal traveled to New York in October 2014 and met El-Goarany. He then arranged for El-Goarany to get in touch with an individual living in Turkey to help El-Goarany travel to join Islamic State, prosecutors said. 
 
 El-Goarany, whose parents lived in Middletown, New York, subsequently traveled from New York City to Istanbul in January 2015, and sometime in mid-February arrived in Syria, prosecutors said. 
 
 After learning of El Gammal's August 2015 arrest, El-Goarany posted a video on YouTube denying he had helped him and saying he "came here out of my own will," prosecutors said. 

 A New York college student killed fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria made a video trying to clear the name of an Arizona man who was charged with helping him join, prosecutors said. 
 
 The 24-year-old student's November death was revealed in papers filed Monday and Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. The student was identified in court papers as Samy El-Goarany. 
 
 The Arizona man, Ahmed Mohammed el Gammal, who's accused of helping the student travel to Syria and receive military and religious-style training, was arrested last year and has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers said the video is unreliable and "overly prejudicial" and should be precluded from a trial scheduled for December. 
 
 Prosecutors say El-Goarany left his parents' home in Middletown, New York, in January 2015, telling them he was returning to his Manhattan college. Instead, the government said, he flew to Turkey and then Syria. 
 
 Reached by phone, El-Goarany's father said the family didn't wish to speak. Court papers did not identify El-Goarany's college. 
 
 Prosecutors said an unidentified person contacted a relative in November to say El-Goarany was killed fighting in Syria. The person provided photographs of a handwritten note in which the student said, "If you're reading this then know that I've been killed in battle," prosecutors said. 
 
 The government also said it had found a YouTube video in which El-Goarany, clad in military fatigues, said on Sept. 8, 2015, two weeks after el Gammal's arrest, that he was in the "Islamic State." 
 
 Prosecutors said El-Goarany claimed in the video in an "unabashed effort to falsely exculpate el Gammal — that no one assisted him in traveling to Syria, including 'Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal." 
 
 Prosecutors argued in the court papers that the video should be admissible at trial to show El-Goarany went to Syria to join the Islamic State group and that he and his co-conspirators took extensive measures to maintain secrecy in the group's methods for recruiting personnel and helping recruits travel. 
 
 El-Goarany's lawyers said in court papers that the video depicts their client sitting on a mat in a sparsely decorated room. They say he states his name, explains he is a U.S. citizen "currently residing in the Islamic State" and says el Gammal did not assist him in his travels. 
 
 The lawyers said the video should not be shown to jurors because it "constitutes inadmissible hearsay." 
 
 "Additionally, the entire video should be precluded as overly prejudicial," they wrote, noting that El-Goarany is unavailable to testify at el Gammal's trial and cannot further explain how el Gammal did not facilitate his travel. 
 
 The defense lawyers also challenged the admissibility of El-Goarany's handwritten note, saying claims of his death were "unreliable," especially since he had written to his brother weeks earlier to say he might have to fall out of contact because he was being monitored. 
 
 "It is not beyond the stretch of the imagination that the letter was written so that El-Goarany could 'disappear,'" the lawyers wrote. 
 
 ——— 
 
 Associated Press Writer Jake Pearson contributed to this report. 

 Story highlights Samy El-Goarany left New York for Turkey in January last year 
 
 He was reportedly killed in November 
 
 (CNN) Samy El-Goarany allegedly told his parents he was going to school in New York -- but instead flew to Turkey and crossed into Syria. 
 
 After leaving in January last year, the 24-year-old was killed in November. An unknown person later messaged his family with a photo of a handwritten note from him, court documents show. 
 
 "If you're reading this then know that I've been killed in battle and am now with our Lord InshaAllah," the note said. 
 
 " I want you to know how much I love you ... but I don't think words will ever be enough to describe it." 
 
 US citizen 
 
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– It's a long way from SoHo to Syria, but somehow a New York City college student ended up dying there last fall fighting for ISIS, prosecutors say. Per court records, 24-year-old Samy Mohammed el-Goarany showed "an increased interest in militant forms of Islam" and headed to Syria in February 2015, the New York Daily News reports. He was killed in November, but not before penning a note that reportedly read: "If you're reading this, then know that I've been killed in battle and am now with our Lord." The court papers were filed Monday in Manhattan federal court in a case against Arizona man Ahmed Mohammed el-Gammal, accused of helping Goarany get to Syria, amNewYork reports. The two men apparently started messaging each other on Facebook in August 2014, after Goarany, a student at an unnamed Manhattan college, noticed Gammal posting pro-ISIS comments. Per court documents: By October, the two men had met in NYC, and Gammal started working with a Turkish man to expedite Goarany's journey overseas. By January 2015, Goarany was in Istanbul, and arrived in Syria the following month. Gammal was arrested in August 2015 on a slew of charges, including providing and conspiring to provide materials to support the militant group; he's pleaded not guilty ahead of his Dec. 5 trial. Goarany made a video in September 2015 after learning of Gammal's arrest, noting he went to Syria of his own accord. "I didn't come to this decision with anybody's influence or anybody's recruitment," he said in the video, per CNN. Gammal's lawyers say reports of Goarany's death are "unreliable," noting it's possible he wrote the note so he could fall off the radar of those monitoring his activity, ABC News notes. (Meanwhile, the "final battle" against ISIS for Mosul has started.)