Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that 21-year-old Muhammad Shahzeb Khan pleaded guilty to plotting to kill Jews in a mass shooting in New York City. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
A 21-year-old Pakistani citizen has pleaded guilty to plotting an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting at a prominent Brooklyn, N.Y., Jewish center on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan pleaded guilty Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe to one count of attempting to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, and faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment when sentenced on Aug. 12.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg described the explicit goal of Khan’s plot as “killing as many Jews as possible.”
“Khan declared that New York City was the ‘perfect’ venue for his attack because of its large Jewish population and boasted that his plot could be the largest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11,” Eisenberg said in a statement.
Khan, who was living in Canada, was arrested Sept. 4, 2024, in the southern Quebec town of Ormstown, located about 12 miles north of the U.S. border, by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian law enforcement agency said in a statement following the operation.
U.S. federal prosecutors said Khan was attempting to reach the U.S.-Canada border with the use of a human smuggler, in order to carry out his attack.
The charging document states that Khan began posting on social media and messaging others about his support for ISIS in about November 2023, a month after Iran-backed Hamas launched a bloody assault on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 people hostage.
Prosecutors said he began planning terrorist attacks in the United States, and began communicating online with two undercover agents, whom he told that he was plotting to kill Jews with an unidentified U.S.-based associate.
He then urged the undercover agents to secure AR-style assault rifles, ammunition and other materials for his attack on a city not identified in the documents.
Around August 2024, he changed his target to New York City, specifically a prominent Jewish religious center in Brooklyn, and said he aimed to conduct the attack on Oct. 7.
“New York is perfect to target Jews,” he told one of the undercover agents, according to the Justice Department. It has the “largest Jewish population in America.”
“We are going to NYC to slaughter them,” he said, according to the Justice Department.
He then, in September, traveled from the vicinity of Toronto toward New York and was arrested in Ormstown, near the U.S.-Canada border.
In June, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that Khan had been extradited to the United States.
“Khan planned to inflict significant casualties and fear before he was intercepted 12 miles from our northern border. May today’s plea emphasize the FBI’s unwavering commitment to stand alongside our local law enforcement partners to defend our city from terrorists seeking to harm any of our citizens,” Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle Jr. of the FBI New York Field Office said in a statement.
