A 20-year-old Pakistani citizen was arrested in Canada after plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
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News cameras set up outside the U.S District Courthouse for the Southern District of New York at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan.
A 20-year-old Pakistani citizen was arrested in Canada this week and accused of plotting to kill “as many Jewish civilians as possible” in New York City on or near the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israelis, according to a Justice Department complaint unsealed Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, who lived in Canada, tried to cross the border with the intention of traveling to New York City, where he planned to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, in support of the Islamic State, prosecutors said.
“New york is perfect to target jews,” he wrote to an associate, according to the filing, adding, “We could rack up easily a lot of jews.”
Mr. Khan was taken into custody by Canadian authorities on Wednesday after trying to enter the United States from Ormstown, about 12 miles north of the New York State border.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, also mentions an unnamed “associate,” but it was unclear whether that person was in custody or an informant.
Mr. Khan is charged with one count of an attempt to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, ISIS, and faces up to 20 years in prison.
In a statement, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland thanked F.B.I. investigators and said U.S. officials were “deeply grateful to our Canadian partners for their critical law enforcement actions in this matter.”
“Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” he said.
Starting last November, law enforcement officials in the United States and Canada began monitoring his electronic communications after he posted expressions of support for ISIS and distributed propaganda videos and literature from groups that had been designated as terrorist organizations in both countries.
His encrypted messages that prosecutors detailed centered on efforts to recruit members for a terror cell, obtain an arsenal and identify Jewish targets in New York.
Two of the people he believed were fellow ISIS supporters were in fact undercover law enforcement officials. Over the course of the past year, they have collected detailed information about his intention to carry out a “coordinated assault” using AR-15-style weapons to target Jewish or Israel-related targets, including institutions associated with the Chabad Hasidic movement.
Mr. Khan believed that Oct. 7 would be an ideal time to attack because large numbers of Jews would be gathered for the anniversary, and because it came four days before Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. He originally had intended to attack an unnamed city, prosecutors said, but switched to New York after noting that it had a higher concentration of Jewish people.
The Justice Department has begun extradition proceedings against Mr. Khan. It was not immediately clear if he had obtained legal representation in the United States.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. More about Glenn Thrush
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Arrested in Plot to Kill Jews in New York on Oct. 7. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | SubscribeSee more on: U.S. Politics, U.S. Justice Department, Hamas, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
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Source: nytimes.com
