Three Men Arrested Earlier This Month on Multiple Terror Attacks for NYC
In light of today’s terror attack in Lower Manhattan, this story is more relevant. Three men were arrested for plotting multiple terror attacks in NYC. ISIS has said in the past that they wanted to target NYC. There has been no link between the three previously arrested terrorists and today’s terror attack, but that could come out later.
A trio of twisted wannabe terrorists, including a US citizen, were planning to strike the city over the summer of 2016, during the Islamic holy month of Ramadhan, officials said.
“NY Needs to fall. It’s a must,” said Talha Haroon, a 19-year-old US citizen living in Pakistan, that May, according to court documents.
Fortunately, Haroon made the proclamation to an undercover agent — and now all three men have been busted on terror charges, the feds said.
In the spring of 2016, Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, a 19-year-old Canadian, and Haroon began planning the attack over messaging apps with the undercover posing as an ISIS supporter, according to the newly unsealed complaint.
They were getting help from Russell Salic, a 37-year-old living in the Philippines who wired money to the US to fund the attack, the papers said.
On May 1, 2016, El Bahnasawy allegedly sent the undercover agent maps of the Big Apple subway system — identifying lines they could blow up with explosives.
“The 2 subway routes we will blow up will be the purple one and the green one,” he told the undercover agent, referring to the No. 7 train and the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 trains from 103rd Street to 33rd Street, according to court documents.
A few days later, Haroon told the agent the subway was the “perfect” target — and they should gun down as many straphangers as possible, including “women or kids,” the complaint said.
“When we run out of bullets, we let the vests go off,” he said, according to prosecutors.
They also set their sights on Times Square.
“We seriously need a car bomb at times square. . Look at these crowds of people!” El Bahnasawy allegedly wrote to the undercover agent on May 12, 2016.
