According to officials on Friday, a student at George Mason University who is supposedly fascinated with ISIS and martyrdom was taken into custody and charged with planning an attack against the Israeli consulate in New York City.
FBI Special Agent Tyler Ellefson filed a charge on Monday alleging that Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan had broken federal regulations related to intending to assassinate a foreign official and disseminating information on weapons in furtherance of a violent crime.
According to GMU, the suspect is a first-year information technology student.
GMU Vice President Paul Allvin told NBC News on Friday that “the student has been barred from entering university property, even though he did not live on campus.” “As criminal proceedings progress, the university will take appropriate action on student code of conduct violations.”
According to the affidavit supporting the suspect’s arrest, Hassan, a resident of Falls Church, Virginia, initially caught the FBI’s notice on May 4 of this year when Fairfax County police alerted federal authorities about someone exhibiting “radical and terrorist-leaning behavior” on social media.
After investigators connected the X user to Hassan, an FBI informant—referred to in court documents as a “confidential human source” or “CH-1″—contacted Hassan.
According to court documents, the informant “responded to this video by pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS and calling Hassan his emir” after Hassan sent him “a pro-ISIS video that called for the killing of Jews.”
When asked if God “wants me to act here,” the informant stated he couldn’t move abroad to join ISIS, according to the FBI.
Hassan allegedly enlisted “CH-1 to conduct a mass casualty attack” on American territory at that point.
Upon learning that Hassan was in New York City, the undercover agent referred to the five boroughs as “a goldmine of targets,” according to the affidavit.
The federal authorities claimed that the suspect provided the agent with “operational support” regarding the “manufacture and use of an explosive device” for “the planned attack on the Consulate General of Israel” in New York City.
“He said CH-1 could either murder people at the consulate with an assault rifle or detonate an explosive vest while standing in a group of targets,” Ellefson stated.
Hassan instructed the informant to “schedule a flight out of the country,” according to federal officials, and that it should be to “somewhere where there are no extradition laws.”
Hassan’s court-appointed lawyer was not immediately available for comment on Friday.
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