Pakistani man charged over plot to ‘slaughter’ Jews in New York on Oct. 7 anniversary
US attorney general says 20-year-old detained in Canada en route to NYC; suspect told undercover cops he planned to kill as many Jews as possible in mass shooting in name of ISIS
NEW YORK — 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 Hamas’s October 7 onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza, federal authorities in the United States announced Friday.
The would-be attacker had shared with undercover agents his plans to attack a Chabad center in Brooklyn, where the Hasidic sect is headquartered.
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 20-year-old, who is also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was apprehended Wednesday and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the terror group, whose name stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.
“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, or when he may be brought to the US to face the charges.
Spokespersons for the US 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 September 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 — referring to Chabad-Lubavitch, the Hasidic sect headquartered in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights.
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 US 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 first anniversary of October 7 — when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages — or on Yom Kippur, which coincides with October 11, authorities said.
On August 20, Khan 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 Chabad center where he planned to carry out the attack, according to the US 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 Chabad didn’t immediately comment Friday.
Khan began making his way to the US 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, in southeast Ontario, and again around Montreal, before their vehicle was eventually stopped around Ormstown, a town in the province of Quebec that is about 19 kilometers (12 miles) from the international border, the complaint states.
