Four Arrested In Alleged Plot To Bomb NY Synagogues (Updated)

According to the complaint that was filed, the plot was discovered in June last year.

From the NBC news website:

Four New York City men were arrested Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up New York City synagogues and other city locations, WNBC's Jonathan Dienst was first to learn.

Raids by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force in the Bronx captured the suspected ringleader and three followers in what law enforcement sources are calling a homegrown terrorist plot.

Investigators stress the suspects' meetings had been infiltrated early on and there was "no chance" the alleged plot could succeed. Some officials have called them an "unsophisticated" group.

Investigators said several of the suspects are Muslims who allegedly talked about destroying two Jewish temples, including at least one in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.
Prosecutors also said the men discussed trying to shoot down military planes at Stewart Airport using stinger missiles.

The article provides details on some previous Islamist terrorist plots that have been foiled:

Since the 9/11 attacks, authorities have arrested suspects in a number of alleged plots against area targets including the Fort Dix New Jersey military base, John F. Kennedy Airport, the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Last December, a New Jersey jury convicted five foreign-born men, living and working in the area for years, of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Dix. Three were brothers from Yugoslavia; the others were born in Jordan and Turkey. The FBI arrested them after 15 months of surveillance after they tried to buy AK-47s and M-16s. The men had claimed they were set up by an unscrupulous informant.

In June 2007, four alleged Muslim extremists -- a 63-year-old former JFK airport cargo employee living in Brooklyn and three others from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago -- were charged with plotting to blow up fuel lines and gas tanks at the busy Queens airport. All four have pleaded not guilty.

Two men were convicted of plotting to bomb the Herald Square station including a Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Matin Siraj. He is serving 30 years in federal prison for conspiring to blow up the subway station on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention in nearby Madison Square Garden.

Al Qaeda operative Iman Faris of Columbus, Ohio, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Kashmir, is serving 20 years in federal prison for planning to destroy American targets including the Brooklyn Bridge, which he cased in 2002 and 2003.

Others have been charged with material support for terrorism. Two American born Muslim converts, Bronx jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah and emergency room doctor Rafiq Sabir, who had worked in New York and Florida, were convicted in 2007 of conspiring to provide material support to Al Qaeda.

Queens resident Mohammed Junaid Babar, who immigrated to the U.S., pleaded guilty in 2004 to supporting Al Qaeda and has since testified against terror suspects who plotted attacks in London.

According to the complaint, the plots were discovered because the person they approached to acquire weapons was in fact an informant:

In their efforts to obtain weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, and the FBI and other agencies monitored the defendants' actions up to the time of arrest, including providing an inactive missile and inert explosives to the informant for the defendants.

UPDATE: Mark Krikorian writes:

But I found this bit particularly disturbing:

The other three suspects converted to Islam after recent stints in jail, police sources said.

Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, and others have long warned about Muslim proselytizing in prisons, and we're starting to see the dangerous results.

More at Memeorandum

[Hat tip: Baruch Who?]

Technorati Tag: Terrorism.