Man charged with planning shooting at New York Jewish center on anniversary of October 7 Hamas attack

NEW YORK (AP) — A Pakistani man was arrested in Canada this week and accused of planning a mass shooting at a Brooklyn Jewish center on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the latest conflict in the Middle East, federal authorities announced Friday.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Muhammad Shahzeb Khan attempted to travel from Canada, where he lives, to New York City with the “declared goal of slaughtering as many Jews as possible in the name of ISIS.”

The 20-year-old, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested on September 4 and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the terrorist group that represents the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham.

“Jewish communities – like all communities in this country – should not have to fear being the target of a hateful terrorist attack,” Garland said in a statement.

It was unclear whether Khan has a lawyer, where in Canada he is being held and when he might be extradited to the United States to face the charges.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan, which is handling the case, referred to the Canadian National Police, which did not respond to an email seeking comment but said in a statement posted online that Khan would appear before the Superior Court of Justice in Montreal on September 13.

“This planned anti-Semitic attack on Jews in the United States is deplorable and there is no place for such ideologically and hate-motivated crimes in Canada,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Michael Duheme said in the statement.

According to US authorities, Khan began sharing ISIS propaganda videos last November and expressing support for the terrorist group in social media posts and in communications with others via an encrypted messaging app.

In conversations with two undercover agents, he said he was trying to set up a “true offline cell” of ISIS to carry out attacks against “Israeli Jewish Chabads” in America. According to the Justice Department, Khan said he and another ISIS operative in the U.S. needed to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition, hunting knives and other materials.

Khan also gave details of how he planned to cross the border from Canada, saying he was considering carrying out the attacks on either Oct. 7, the anniversary of the attacks, or Oct. 11, the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, authorities said.

On August 20, he told undercover agents that he had chosen New York as a target because of its large Jewish population. He also sent a photo of the specific area inside a Jewish center where he planned to carry out the attack, according to the Justice Department.

In his online messages, he referred to the Brooklyn location, which is not named in court documents, as “the global headquarters of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews,” according to authorities.

A spokesman for Chabad-Lubavitch, an influential Hasidic Jewish movement headquartered in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, had no immediate comment on Friday.

Khan left the Toronto area for the United States on Wednesday morning in a car in which he also picked up other passengers, according to the complaint filed by federal authorities on Friday.

The group changed cars near Nepanee and then again near Montreal before their vehicle was finally stopped near Ormstown, a town in the province of Quebec about 19 kilometers from the international border, the complaint says.

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