The United States claimed on Friday, September 6, to have thwarted a “terrorist attack” against Jews in New York, allegedly perpetrated around October 7 in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group, by a Pakistani living in Canada.
The 20-year-old, “Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, aka Shazeb Jadoon, attempted to enter the United States to commit a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York” AND “He was arrested on September 4 in Canada at the request of the federal prosecutor” of Manhattan, the US Department of Justice revealed in a statement.
“The defendant is suspected of having planned a terrorist attack on or around October 7 of this year with the stated aim of massacring, in the name of ISIS, as many Jews as possible.”denounced the Secretary of Justice, Merrick Garland.
For the director of the Federal Police (FBI), Christopher Wray, the young Pakistani was “Determined to kill Jews here in the United States, almost a year after Hamas’s heinous attack on Israel”October 7, 2023.
Under surveillance since November
According to the FBI and New York federal prosecutors’ investigation, cited in the press release, Mr. Khan, a resident of Canada, attempted to go to New York, where “intended to carry out a mass killing using automatic and semi-automatic weapons in support of ISIS against a Jewish center in Brooklyn”one of the five districts of the multicultural megacity of the United States, the 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, in particular for his messages on social networks, his encrypted communications and the “Distribution of IS propaganda videos and literature”according to the Department of Justice.
Minister Garland stated “deeply grateful to [ses] Canadian partners for acting quickly and arresting the accused”.
