Two female roommates in Queens, New York are charged with plotting a terrorist attack on American soil.
Noelle Velentzas, 28 and Asia Siddiqui, 31, are both U.S. citizens. The complaint against them was unsealed Thursday at Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
“The investigation has revealed that Velentzas espouses violent jihadist beliefs and has repeatedly expressed an interest in terrorist attacks committed within the United States,” the complaint stated.
A source told Fox News the women were plotting to use pressure cooker bombs similar to the ones used in the Boston Marathon bombings. They were also in possession of propane tanks along with instructions on how to turn them into bombs.
Both of the women had “repeated contact with members of the foreign terrorist organization al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” One of the women said that Osama Bin Laden was her “hero”.
In communications with terrorists, Velentzas asked why they would need to come to the middle east when there were plenty of opportunities for “pleasing Allah” in the U.S.
The women face life in prison if convicted on all charges.
A Detroit man has been arrested after he stabbed two people at a bus stop who told him they were not Muslims.
Terrance Thomas approached a bus stop near Detroit on Saturday where a group was making small talk. Thomas then asked the people if they were Muslims. Two of them group said they were not Muslim.
Thomas then pulled out a knife and stabbed one victim five times and the other victim once in the hand.
Thomas fled the scene but was caught by police just a few minutes after his assault. He had two knives and a package of marijuana.
Thomas is jailed on one million dollars bond facing charges of two counts to assault with intent to murder, once count of carrying a dangerous weapon and possession of a controlled substance.
The FBI announced they are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
A former taxi driver from northern Virginia is now on the list of the world’s most wanted terrorists.
Liban Haji Mohamed, 29, was born in Somalia but became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The FBI says that Liban is a recruiter for the al-Shabab terrorist network in Somalia.
Liban is the older brother of Gulet Mohamed, who has been fighting the government for four years over his placement on the no-fly list. The family claims that Liban was harassed by the FBI after advocating for his younger brother and that he’s gone into hiding because he wanted to avoid harassment.
The charges against Liban Mohamed including providing material support to both Al Qaeda and al-Shabab. The FBI says it’s likely he left the U.S. for Africa in July 2012 but prior to that had been a taxi driver in Fairfax County, Virginia.
“It is important for us to locate Mohamed because he has knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area’s infrastructure such as shopping areas, Metro, airports, and government buildings,” said Carl Ghattas, special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “This makes him an asset to his terrorist associates who might plot attacks on U.S. soil.”
The FBI also said that he was a “close associate” of Zachary Cheeser, a northern Virginia man who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for trying to join al-Shabab in 2011 along with make threats against the creators of the cartoon South Park for a perceived insult to prophet Muhammad.
Liban’s family claims the release from the FBI is nothing more than an attempt to influence the judge in the case Gulet Mohamed has filed.
In the wake of the violent protests in St. Louis and Ferguson, Missouri over the decision by the grand jury not to charge officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, it’s reported the Justice Department will not be filing any charges against the former officer.
The prosecutors within the Justice Department did not find sufficient evidence to support any charges, including civil rights charges.
The FBI’s investigation into the incident destroyed many of the claims that Michael Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot by Officer Wilson. The FBI’s investigation showed Brown was actually charging toward Officer Wilson in a manner consistent with the officer’s report of the incident.
The Justice Department plans to release a report explaining the decision but spokeswoman Dena Iverson would not tell the New York Times when that might be released to the public.
A larger investigation into the Ferguson police department remains open and active according to Justice Department officials.
The New York City Police Department, already on alert because of the murder of officers by black residents over the Eric Garner situation, is on highest alert because of threats from Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
ISIS has called for Muslims within America to “strike police” and after last week’s Paris terror attacks officials are seriously considering the threat.
“Do not let the battle pass you by wherever you may be,” ISIS spokesman Abu Mohamad Al-Adnani declared in an online video. “Strike their police, security and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. [For those] who don’t have an improvised explosive device or a bullet, [you] can smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.”
The NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism told CBS’s “Face The Nation” that the announcement was a renewal of a call ISIS made in September for attacks on police.
The NYPD sent an e-mail memo to all police.
“If you are assigned to a fixed post, do not sit together in the RMP [police car],” the e-mail, obtained by The New York Post, read. “At least one officer must stand outside the vehicle at all times. Pay attention to your surroundings. Officers must pay close attention to approaching vehicles . . . Pay close attention to people as they approach. Look for their hands.”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said that the ISIS cyber attacks and threats are “severely disturbing.”
The FBI announced Friday that North Korea was definitively behind the cyberattack against Sony that released movies, damaging e-mails and other personal information about employees and celebrities.
“The FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions,” the FBI said in a statement on Friday. “[There is] significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyber activity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea.”
The investigators say that North Korea’s intentions were to clearly harm not only Sony but the rights of Americans.
“We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there,” the FBI said in its statement. “Further, North Korea’s attack on SPE reaffirms that cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers to the United States. Though the FBI has seen a wide variety and increasing number of cyber intrusions, the destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart.”
Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told Fox News that unless the United States responds strongly to this attack, it will be open season on the U.S. from hackers in other countries.
“I think it is correct to treat it as a national security threat because it really could have been in a serious place,” Bolton said. “If we can conclude it was North Korea, we need to put them back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, we need to put all the economic sanctions back in place. If you treat this simply as an inconvenience, other countries will conclude that they can attack and get away with it.”
A terrorist bombing plot against Oprah Winfrey’s studios and the iconic “Sears Tower” in Chicago has been uncovered after two of the conspirators were arrested on other crimes.
The plot was first reported by Judicial Watch.
The bombing scheme was plotted in 2009 and allegedly was inspired by militant Islamist hatred of American soldiers being on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Winfrey was targeted because the plotters resented her popularity and power over social issues and debate. The tower because of its iconic status.
Two of the plotters are jailed on state charges. The first, Emad Karakrah, is in the Cook County, Illinois jail on charges of making a false car bomb threat. He led police on a high-speed chase through Chicago with an ISIS flag on his car.
The second, Hector Huerta, is an illegal alien in the El Paso County, Texas Jail. He was arrested on August 13th for DUI and has been charged with “reentry of a deported alien” for the third time in five years.
Sources told Judicial Watch that two of the FBI’s “most wanted terrorists”, Jaber Elbaneh and Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah were part of the planning of the aborted 2009 attack.
The Department of Justice and FBI have not commented on the report.
The Syrian Electronic Army decided to take American Thanksgiving and use it to remind the world they are still watching.
A number of major websites, including major media organizations, were targeted by the SEA. Their websites were met with an error message that read “you’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).”
Other websites featured nothing but the SEA logo.
Dell, Microsoft, Ferrari and even UNICEF were hit by the group.
“It is PR move to show they have the skills, but what they are doing is not dramatically sophisticated,” Ernest Hilbert, managing director of cybercrime at investigations firm Kroll, and former FBI agent, told CNBC, who had been a victim of the group.
“This is a defacement of a website and they redirected traffic from the real site to a site with their stuff on it instead.”
The SEA are a group of hackers that support the government of Bashir al-Assad and claim that western media outlets are backing the terrorist groups that have been fighting against the Syrian regime.
A Virginia woman is under arrest after she lied to authorities about her connections to ISIS.
Heather Elizabeth Coffman, 29, has been a big supporter of the terrorist group on social media and worked to help those in the United States connect with the group.
The FBI says that Coffman told an undercover agent that she could help them join the terrorist group. She claimed that she had a husband who traveled to Turkey to meet with ISIS agents that could get him to the front lines in Syria. She then claimed the “husband” left her and never made the move.
Coffman had come to the FBI’s attention because of her emphatic postings supporting ISIS on Facebook.
The FBI says Coffman “is suspected of conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) a foreign terrorist organization.”
“As far as I know, she hasn’t traveled anywhere,” Mark Henry Schmidt, Coffman’s attorney, told The Washington Post. “Her connections with the outside world would be on the Internet. I imagine you can get into trouble on the Internet, but I imagine you can also think a lot more’s going on than really is. If nothing else, this is certainly a cautionary tale about the Internet.”
Three teenage girls from Colorado were arrested at a German airport during an attempt to travel to Turkey to join ISIS.
The three girls left their homes on Friday, telling their families that they were either late for school when the schools called to report them missing or that they were home sick. When the girls were gone later that day, her parents called police.
“Farah stated that he checked and found that his daughters’ passports were missing along with $2000 in cash,” a runaway report filed by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office states. “It is unknown what clothing they were wearing today, but they both wear headscarves as part of their religion.”
The FBI was notified after the discovery of the missing passport and flagged passports for all three girls. The girls were captured in Germany and put on planes back to the United States after telling FBI investigators that they were attempting to join ISIS.
Officials have not stated if the girls will be charged with attempting to assist a terrorist organization.
