The two suspects charged with bringing homemade bombs to a protest outside the home of New York City\u2019s mayor were recorded describing their plan to kill as many as 60 people in a bid to \u201cstart terror,\u201d according to an indictment released Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Their conversations were preserved on dashcam audio and video recordings recovered from the vehicle they drove from Pennsylvania to Manhattan ahead of the March 7 attack near Gracie Mansion where prosecutors say two explosive devices were thrown. Neither exploded, and both men were quickly detained.<\/p>\n
In the recordings, Emir Balat, 18, said he wanted to target “the government\u201d and \u201ccivilians also,\u201d according to the new court filing. \u201cAll I know is I want to start terror, bro,\u201d the other passenger, 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, allegedly added.<\/p>\n
Police also recovered a notebook inside the car outlining an alternative plan for a vehicle attack on locations that included festivals, parades and celebrations, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have accused Kayumi and Balat of lighting the homemade devices \u2014 which contained the explosive TATP and shrapnel \u2014 during an anti-Islam demonstration hosted by Jake Lang, a far-right activist and critic of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim to hold the office.<\/p>\n
Kayumi and Balat later told police they were inspired by ISIS, according to a federal complaint released last month. <\/p>\n
At an initial court appearance last month, Balat\u2019s lawyer, Mehdi Essmidi, said his client had \u201ccomplicated stuff going on\u201d in his life, without elaborating. Kayumi\u2019s attorney declined to speak to reporters.<\/p>\n
Neither responded to voice messages left Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
In the latest court filing, prosecutors said Balat was recorded telling Kayumi that he had \u201ccalculated\u201d the devices were \u201cgoing to kill about 8 to 16 people,\u201d or as many as 60 if the area was crowded.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, Balat warned Kayumi to throw the device as quick as possible. He then went over the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to say 3, 2, 1, and I\u2019m going to take it out as fast and controlled as possible,\u201d Balat continued, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n
Balat also said he was \u201cgoing to just start attacking police,\u201d adding that he could \u201cthrow (an explosive device) in a cafe,\u201d if the initial plan did not work, the indictment said. <\/p>\n
It wasn’t clear from the indictment whether the men were aware they were being recorded by the vehicle’s dashboard camera.<\/p>\n
Both men are being held without bail on charges that include attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and using a weapon of mass destruction. They were not required to enter a plea.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs alleged, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi traveled to New York City with IEDs to kill as many people as possible in an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack,\u201d FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. said in a statement. \u201cThe alleged notes and instructions recovered from their vehicle demonstrate just how much cruelty they had planned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two suspects charged with bringing homemade bombs to a protest outside the home of New York City\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3294,9,24,56,63,65,64,3694],"class_list":{"0":"post-189083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-crime-and-courts","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-ny","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-nyc-headlines","14":"tag-nyc-news","15":"tag-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}