A 20-year-old Pakistani national living in Canada has been arrested by the US and accused of planning a terrorist attack targeting Jews in New York City around the October 7 anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Friday that Khan, aka Shahzeb Jadoon, planned a terrorist attack in New York City (NYC) around October 7 with the goal of “slaughtering as many Jews as possible in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).”
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, identified as an ISIS supporter, was arrested on Wednesday in the Canadian town of Ormstown, about 60 km south of Montreal and about 20 km from the US-Canada border. He also faces three charges in Canada.
He was arrested in connection with a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York alleging that he attempted to provide material support and resources to ISIS.
If found guilty, Khan faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
Gaza Strip-based Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from land, air and sea on October 7, 2023.
In preparation for the planned attack, Khan attempted to reach the US-Canada border. He used three different cars to travel from Canada to the US before being stopped near Ormstown.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC News) said that the US agency’s investigative work and the swift action of our Canadian law enforcement partners led to the accused being taken into custody. They also said that Khan now faces three charges in Canada.
It says the charges are, ‘attempting to leave Canada to commit a crime for a terrorist group’, ‘participating in activities of a terrorist group’, and ‘conspiracy to commit a crime by violating US immigration law – illegally entering or attempting to enter the US’.
According to the complaint filed in New York, Khan attempted to travel from Canada to New York City, where he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass shooting in support of IS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, New York.
Khan began posting on social media about his support for IS and communicating with others on encrypted messaging applications around November last year, when, among other things, Khan also distributed IS propaganda videos and literature.
“If we succeed in our plan, this will be the largest attack on American soil since 9/11,” he said in a message.
The statement said Khan began communicating with two undercover law enforcement officers. During those conversations, Khan confirmed that he and an American IS supporter, identified in the complaint only as Associate-1, were planning an attack in a specific U.S. city, identified as ‘City-1.’ Among other things, Khan said he was actively attempting to create “a bona fide offline cell” of IS supporters to “target Israeli Jewish Chabad” using AR-style rifles to conduct a “coordinated attack” in the city … with IS supporters spread out around the city.
During subsequent conversations, Khan repeatedly directed the undercover officers to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition and other materials to carry out attacks and identified specific locations in the city where the attacks were to be carried out, the complaint said.
Khan also described how he would cross the border from Canada to the US to carry out the attacks.
During these conversations with the undercover officers, Khan stressed that “October 7 and October 11 are the best days to target Jews” and that the community would definitely hold some protests on the first anniversary and that October 11 is ‘Yom Kippur’, an important Jewish festival.
Around August 20, Khan changed his target location from City-1 to New York City and decided to target a Jewish center in Brooklyn. In support of his choice, Khan also claimed that “New York is the perfect place to target Jews” because it has “the largest Jewish population in the US” and therefore, “even if we don’t attack an event, we can easily gather a lot of Jews”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
