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A Pakistani man who resides in Canada was arrested this week for planning to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York City around Oct. 7, the first anniversary of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel, the Justice Department said on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, had allegedly planned to attack a Jewish center in Brooklyn in support of the Islamic State group, or ISIS. He also considered carrying out a shooting on Oct. 11, which is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, federal officials said.
Khan, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested on Wednesday in or around Ormstown, Canada, which is about 12 miles from the U.S. border, the Justice Department said. The U.S. government said it will seek to extradite him from Canada.
Khan has been charged with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, which carries up to 20 years in prison. It’s unclear if he has obtained legal representation. The Federal Defenders of New York did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment on Friday.
According to the criminal complaint, Khan began expressing his support for ISIS and his desire to carry out terrorist attacks in support of the group as early as November 2023 by way of social media and in communications with an FBI informant.
From late July 2024 on, Khan started communicating with two undercover law enforcement officers, telling them through encrypted messages that he was planning an attack on Jewish Chabads in a U.S. city with AR-style rifles and claiming that he had found a smuggler to take him across the border from Canada into the U.S., the complaint states. He then allegedly changed his location target to New York City, citing its large Jewish population.
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” he added.
There has been a sharp increase in reports of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in the U.S. since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its attacks on Israel, killing over 1,200 people. Israel responded with a mass assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people to date, Palestinian health officials say. The war has also sparked multiple violent — even deadly — incidents against Jewish and Muslim people in the U.S.