A freshman at George Mason University in Virginia is accused of plotting a mass casualty attack at the Israeli consulate general in New York. He faces a charge of distributing information relating to weapons of mass destruction, according to federal court documents.
The student, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, a citizen of Egypt, interacted with an F.B.I. informant he met online. After the informant told Mr. Hassan that it may be God’s will for the informant to “act here,” Mr. Hassan, 18, encouraged the informant to attack government buildings and sent a link to a video with bomb-making instructions, according to an affidavit filed on Monday by an F.B.I. agent.
When the informant, posing as an eager co-conspirator, told Mr. Hassan he was in New York, the student replied that the city was a “goldmine of targets” and that the best choice for an attack would be a building representing the “Yahud” — the Arabic word for Jews. The next day, Mr. Hassan sent the informant the address of the Israeli consulate general in the city.
“Two options: lay havoc on them with an assault rifle or detonate a TATP vest in the midst of them,” Mr. Hassan wrote, referring to an explosive compound.
He was arrested on Tuesday in Falls Church, Va., according to court documents. The charge he faces carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, a suburb of Washington, enrolls about 40,000 students. It’s the largest public research university in Virginia, and also claims to be the state’s most diverse. The law school, which was renamed after Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, has become a hub of conservative legal scholarship and has employed several conservative sitting Supreme Court justices as instructors.
Paul Allvin, a spokesman for the university, confirmed that Mr. Hassan was a freshman at the school studying information technology. He did not live on campus and was banned from university property after it learned of his arrest on Tuesday, Mr. Allvin said.
The school’s police department took part in a raid on a shared off-campus home in November and later issued campus bans to two leaders of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine who lived there.
The university said the search produced “sufficient amounts of weaponry and materials calling for violence against Americans and in particular Jews to warrant immediate precautionary action to maintain the safety of the university community.” No criminal charges have been brought in connection to the raid, according to a spokeswoman for the county prosecutor. The raid provoked an outcry from campus and national organizations that said the students were targeted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Mr. Allvin said there did not appear to be any connection between that raid and Mr. Hassan’s arrest.
The university has taken additional security measures, Mr. Allvin said, including maintaining close ties with local and federal law enforcement and developing the first fully equipped university SWAT team in Virginia.
Mr. Hassan is already in deportation proceedings, according to court documents. He was interviewed by the F.B.I. in 2022, when he was a juvenile, because of his online expressions of support for the terrorist group ISIS, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Hassan’s public defender, Cadence Mertz, said she had no comment.
In May, the F.B.I. received information from the Fairfax County Police Department regarding an anonymous tip about an X user based in Virginia who made posts supporting ISIS and Hamas. In August, the F.B.I. informant commented on a post that the agency had determined was made by Mr. Hassan, and then began corresponding with him on Telegram.
In November, Mr. Hassan sent the informant “a pro-ISIS video that called for the killing of Jews,” according to the affidavit. After the informant told him he pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS and said he was waiting on Mr. Hassan’s direction, the two men began discussing a plan for the informant to undertake a terror attack.
In late November, Mr. Hassan asked the informant how far away he was from buying the materials to build a bomb. When the informant responded that he was studying timers and had obtained most of the materials, Mr. Hassan responded “good work.”
A few days later, he offered advice on the size of ball bearings to be used as shrapnel.In another court filing, the F.B.I. indicated it was also investigating him for providing material support or resources to a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
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