FBI arrests college student for plotting mass casualty attack on Israeli consulate in NYC

"The FBI has arrested a suspect for a planned mass casualty terror attack against the Israeli consulate in New York City, the consulate said on Thursday.

The suspect, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, an 18-year-old Egyptian national living in Falls Church, Virginia, instructed an FBI informant to carry out the attack, according to a criminal complaint filed on Monday. He was identified as a freshman at George Mason University, which later confirmed he was enrolled at the school but said he was barred from campus following his arrest.

Hassan ran several social media accounts that supported ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hamas, and advocated for violence against Jews, the FBI said in the complaint filed in a federal court in Virginia.

Local police located Hassan after receiving a tip about one of Hassan’s accounts on X. An undercover FBI asset then connected with Hassan on social media and secure messaging apps. Hassan allegedly instructed the informant on how to join ISIS and shared jihadist propaganda, including a video that advocated for killing Jews.

He encouraged the informant to carry out an attack, sending him instructions on how to create a ‘martyrdom video,’ the complaint said.

The suspect sent the informant bomb-making instructions and told the informant, who said he was in New York, to target a building representing Jews, later settling on the Israeli consulate. The bomb-making instructions allegedly included the suggestion that packing the explosive with 30 mm aluminum ball bearings, for shrapnel, ‘will do the trick.’

Hassan told the informant how to surveil the consulate and how to escape to ISIS territory after the attack, and also suggested he could ‘lay havoc on them with an assault rifle’ instead of a bomb. He also told the informant to livestream the attack so Hassan could give the footage to ISIS..."