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Omar Alkattoul of Sayreville posted a manifesto last Nov. 1 in a forum frequented by extremists that included a claim of an attack that he said had already occurred.
This triggered instant alarms because active shooters in certain instances have done the same just before carrying out fatal missions across the U.S.
Alkattoul frightened Jews statewide, sparked a surge of law enforcement tactical protection at their houses of worship and prompted the FBI to warn their community at large.
Alkattoul told federal agents that he was joking and wouldn’t become violent, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court in Trenton.
Rather than risk the consequences of a conviction at trial, he took a deal from the government, pleading guilty on Wednesday, July 12, in Trenton to one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce.
“No one should be targeted for violence or with acts of hate because of how they worship,” U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
“We intend to seek a sentence that will hold him accountable,” the U.S. attorney said, without being specific.
Alkattoul will have to serve out whatever prison sentence he gets because there’s no parole in the federal prison system.
Alkattoul was still attending Sayreville High School when he sent a message via social media last fall to six unidentified recipients with a link to his manifesto, “When Swords Collide,” saying that it was "in the context of an attack on Jews," Sellinger said.
In the screed, Alkattoul said his "hatred towards Jews and their heinous acts” fueled his desire for revenge against the Jews for the deaths of Muslims.
The idea, he said, is to “remind the Jews that as long as 1 Muslim remains in this world they will never live a pleasant life until the Muslims in Palestine, Syria, West Africa, and South Asia are living a pleasant life.”
“I did target a synagogue for a really good reason according to myself and a lot of Muslims who have a brain,” Alkattoul wrote. “Let’s be aware of the fact that the Jews promote the biggest hatred against Muslimeen even in the west.”
Alkattoul agreed to be taken to a hospital for a voluntary exam after being interviewed by the FBI.
During the trip, he allegedly told a hospital employee that he identified with the ideologies of ISIS and al-Qaeda and had plans to "blow up a synagogue.”
He added that he didn’t know if it “was going to be in a day, a week, or year."
U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch scheduled sentencing for Nov. 14.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI and task force officers of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark with identifying and capturing Alkattoul.
He also thanked agents of FBI field officers in New York, Washington, DC, and Florida, as well as the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and Sayreville police.
Securing the plea were Christopher Amore, who’s the co-chief of Sellinger’s General Crimes Unit, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Levin of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s National Security Unit. They were assisted by members of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division, the U.S. attorney said.
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