A Pakistani man was arrested in Canada this week and accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the latest conflict in the Middle East, federal authorities announced Friday.
US Attorney General 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 Associated Press reported.
The 20 year-old, who is also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was apprehended Sept. 4 and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the terror group.
“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 Khan has a lawyer, where in Canada he was being held and when he may be brought to the US to face the charges.
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 US 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.
US authorities said Khan began sharing ISIS propaganda videos and expressing his support for the terror 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 ISIS in order to carry out attacks against “Israeli Jewish chabads” in America. Khan said he and another ISIS supporter based in the US needed to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition, hunting knives and other materials, according to the Justice Department.
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 is the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, authorities said.
On Aug. 20, he told the undercover officers that he had settled on targeting New York because of its sizeable 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.
