Man charged with plotting shooting at a New York Jewish center on anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack
NEW YORK — A Pakistani man has been arrested in Canada and accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the latest Israel-Hamas war, federal authorities announced Friday.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland said Muhammad Shahzeb Khan had attempted to travel from Canada, where he lives, to New York City with the “stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible.”
The man also known as Shahzeb Jadoon was apprehended Wednesday and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the terrorist group, which is sometimes referred to as ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” Garland said in a statement.
It was unclear if the 20-year-old Khan has a lawyer, where in Canada he was being held or when he may be brought to the U.S. to face the charges.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video of California-born Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was killed with 5 other Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Spokespersons for the Justice Department and the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office, which is handling the case, deferred to Canadian national police, which didn’t respond to an email seeking comment but said in a statement posted online that Khan will appear in the Superior Court of Justice in Montreal on Sept. 13.
“This planned antisemitic attack against Jewish people in the U.S. is deplorable and there is no place for such ideological and hate-motivated crime in Canada,” Michael Duheme, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said in the statement.
U.S. authorities said Khan began sharing Islamic State propaganda videos and expressing his support for the extremist group in social media posts and communications with others on an encrypted messaging app last November.
In conversations with two undercover law enforcement officers, he said he was trying to start a “real offline cell” of Islamic State in order to carry out attacks against “Israeli Jewish chabads” in the U.S. Khan said he and another Islamic State supporter based in the U.S. needed to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition and other materials, according to the Justice Department.
An American woman was fatally shot while participating in a protest in the West Bank. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers were responsible.
Authorities said Khan also provided details about how he would cross the border from Canada and said he was considering conducting the attacks on either the Oct. 7 anniversary or on Oct. 11, which this year marks the start of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
On Aug. 20, he told the undercover officers that he had settled on targeting New York because of its sizable Jewish population and sent a photograph of the specific area inside a Jewish center where he planned to carry out the attack, according to the Justice Department.
His online messages described the Brooklyn site, which is not named in court documents, as “the ultra orthodox hasidic jews world headquarters,” according to authorities.
A spokesperson for the Chabad-Lubavitch, an influential Hasidic Jewish movement headquartered in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section, didn’t immediately comment Friday.
Khan began making his way to the U.S. on Wednesday morning from the Toronto area in a car that also picked up additional passengers, according to the federal complaint unsealed Friday.
The group switched cars around Nepanee and again around Montreal, before their vehicle was stopped around Ormstown, a town in Quebec that is about 12 miles from the U.S. border, the complaint states.
Marcelo writes for the Associated Press.
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