Anti-Jewish “terrorist attack” foiled in New York: planned for around October 7

The United States claimed on Friday to have thwarted a “terrorist attack” against Jews in New York, allegedly carried out around October 7 in the name of the Islamic State (EI) group by a Pakistani living in Canada, who has been arrested.

 

The 20-year-old “Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a.k.a. Shazeb Jadoon, attempted to enter the United States to commit mass murder in a New York Jewish center” and “was arrested on September 4 in Canada following a request from the federal prosecutor's office” in Manhattan, the US Department of Justice revealed in a statement.

 

“The accused is suspected of planning a terrorist attack around October 7 this year with the stated aim of massacring, in the name of the EI, as many Jews as possible,” denounced Justice Minister Merrick Garland.

 

For Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, the young Pakistani was “determined to kill Jews here in the United States, nearly a year after Hamas's atrocious attack on Israel” on October 7, 2023.

 

According to the investigation by the FBI and the federal prosecutor's office in New York, cited in the press release, Mr. Khan, a resident of Canada, attempted to travel to New York where “he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass killing in support of the EI against a Jewish center in Brooklyn”, one of the five boroughs of the multicultural megalopolis of the United States, a country with the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel, some six million.

 

The young man had been under surveillance since last November, notably for his social networking messages, encrypted communications and “distribution of EI propaganda videos and literature”, according to the Ministry of Justice.

 

Minister  Garland said he was “deeply grateful to (his) Canadian partners for acting swiftly and taking the accused into custody”.