Six young men across three US states have been arrested so far in an Islamic State-inspired multi-layer terror plot that was thwarted last week by the FBI.
The men planned to attack gay bars in Dearborn, Michigan, on Halloween and to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, to which they had pledged allegiance.
On Wednesday, acting US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced that authorities had arrested two of the suspects. One was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a designated terror organization, while the other was charged with transmitting violent antisemitic threats to individuals “in New Jersey and beyond,” Habba clarified.
The six men purchased firearms and ammunition and had been practicing at shooting ranges. They were also using encrypted messaging applications to plan their travel to Syria, via Turkey, to join ISIS as terrorist operatives.
Since the arrest of the first two, four more have been inculpated, and details of the plot have begun to emerge.
One of the original two arrested individuals is Milo Sedarat, the son of Roger Sedarat, an Iranian-American poet and English professor at Queens College in New York City.
'I hope a second Holocaust happens to them'
According to one of the unsealed criminal complaints, Sedarat claimed to be “the biggest antisemite in America” and once wrote to a friend, “Everyone hates the Jews now... I hope a second Holocaust happens to them.”
He also told friends he wanted to kill his mother’s Jewish friends for “brainwashing her... into being a Zionist.”
Once, when passing an Israeli protest, he told a friend, “I’m gonna drive into the protest and run over like 10 Jews.”
He also reportedly dreamed about lining up and executing 500 Jewish men in front of their families, then taking their wives as slaves, according to the complaint. He said he would be willing to go to prison if he killed a rabbi.
Sedarat was arrested at his home in Montclair, New Jersey.
One of his co-conspirators, Tomas Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, 19, was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport, where he was set to fly to Turkey, according to prosecutors. His mother, Meral Guzel, is the head of the UN Women’s Entrepreneurship program. Jimenez-Guzel is a freshman at Rowan University.
In a letter to students, university president Ali A. Houshmand said, “At no time during the investigation was there ever a threat to the university community. The safety and integrity of our campus community are always our top priorities, and the university has a long-standing practice of cooperating fully with law enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels.”
Three of the others were named in a separate unsealed complaint as Mohmed Ali, 20; Majed Mahmoud, 20; and Ayob Nasser, 19 (the latter two are brothers), on charges of “receiving and transferring, and attempting and conspiring to transfer, firearms and ammunition knowing and having reasonable cause to believe that the firearms and ammunition would be used to commit a Federal crime of terrorism.”
The weapons purchased by Nasser and Mahmoud included a DDM4V7 rifle, an AR-15 rifle, and 16,000 rounds of ammunition. Ali purchased an AR-15 and a forced reset trigger to allow for an increase in the rate of fire.
According to the complaint, during a group call, the co-conspirators said they wanted to do “the same thing as France,” referencing the 2015 ISIS-linked terrorist attacks in Paris.