Teen crafted New York terror plot online
Canadian teen planned attack on New York
By his own lawyers’ account, Abdul El Bahnasawy led a sheltered existence in Mississauga, Ont.
Suffering from “serious” mental-health problems, the teenager’s world revolved around his parents, his older sister and the people he met while being treated for an opioid addiction. In high school, he never got past Grade 11.
“He has no friends outside of his close-knit family,” said the attorneys last year.
But for months online, El Bahnasawy led a much different life, claiming allegiance to the Islamic State and concocting an elaborate and bloody plot to attack the subway system, concerts and other public places in New York City.
It was a plan — sketched out in part on subway maps — he hoped would rival 9/11 in scope and at least bring him a glorious death “to please Allah.”
What El Bahnasawy did not know is that one of the co–conspirators he plotted with by Internet was actually an undercover FBI agent, not a fellow ISIL adherent.
When the Canadian entered the States to begin building a bomb — accompanied by his parents and sister on a family vacation he hoped to use as a front — the 18-year-old was arrested.
With his court file unsealed Friday after an extraordinary 18 months of secrecy, a portrait began to emerge of a young, troubled and unlikely terror mastermind from the suburbs outside Toronto.
“Let’s just shoot up concerts cuz they kill a lot of people,” El Bahnasawy suggested with a teen’s breezy, vague enthusiasm in one message to the undercover agent. “Times square is also good but sometimes there isn’t a lot of people. Actually never mind there are a lot … Car bomb there is good.”
Within five months of his arrest, the immigrant from Kuwait had pleaded guilty to several terrorism offences and now faces up to life in prison. Until Friday, the case was subject to a courtimposed sealing order, requested by the U.S. Attorney’s office to avoid tipping off two other suspects before they were detained.
But in a succession of letters and court appearances last year aimed at getting El Bahnasawy out of segregation at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Centre, lawyer Sabrina Shroff painted her client as mentally fragile and “deteriorating.”
“Given his age and his very special mental health and other issues, Mr. Bahnasawy is one of the few clients that, in all my years, I have made sure to visit every single day,” she told the judge at one point.
More detailed references to his psychological issues have been redacted from court documents. But some letters referred to a drug-addiction problem, with repeated bouts of treatments, then relapses. Guards discovered that another inmate at the MCC had given him a tablet of Suboxone, an opioid used to treat dependency, leading to an 18-month ban on his receiving visitors.
Meanwhile, with sentencing scheduled for next month, there appears to be turmoil in El Bahnasawy’s legal camp. And a lawyer for Canada’s best-known convicted terrorist, Omar Khadr, could end up playing a role as the case moves on.
El Bahnasawy, now 19, indicated in an email to a New York lawyer last month that he wanted to fire his current lawyers, who include Shroff. On Tuesday, court documents indicate, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman scheduled a meeting for Nov. 2 between the current lawyers, their possible replacements and Edmonton’s Dennis Edney, who acted for Khadr and is described as representing the defendant’s parents. None of the advocates returned phone calls Tuesday, and the defendant’s parents could not be reached for comment.
El Bahnasawy was born in Kuwait but lived most of his life in Canada, where he has citizenship. He returned to Kuwait for grades nine and 10, then came back here, he told court last year.
He was arrested May 21, 2016 — in front of his family — the culmination of an undercover operation that also involved an American suspect in Pakistan and another in the Philippines. The other men are now in custody in those countries.
It’s unclear how the Canadian came into contact with the agent or the two other would-be jihadists, but they appeared to communicate mostly online.
In pleading guilty to seven crimes in October 2016, El Bahnasawy admitted to conspiring to bomb Times Square, attack the subway and shoot up unnamed concerts. He was to join forces with the American in Pakistan — another 18-year-old trying to raise enough money for an air ticket to New York — and the agent.
At one point that spring, the Canadian ordered 40 pounds of hydrogen peroxide — an ingredient in the explosive TATP — and had it delivered to the undercover agent. He also arranged to rent a “cabin” in New Jersey where a bomb could be assembled, according to U.S. prosecutors.
El Bahnasawy advised the agent he would come to New York with his family and be “masked behind my parents back,” before “ditching” them and carrying out the plot.
“These Americans need an attack, and we can’t delay or cancel,” he told the undercover operative, according to prosecution documents. “I wanna create the next 9/11 but if I don’t, id rather do something than nothing at all.”
LET’S JUST SHOOT UP CONCERTS CUZ THEY KILL A LOT OF PEOPLE.