Canada police arrest Pakistani man for planned ISIS-inspired attack on New York Jewish center News
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Canada police arrest Pakistani man for planned ISIS-inspired attack on New York Jewish center

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced Friday that it had arrested a 20-year-old Pakistani man residing in Canada over an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a New York City Jewish center on or around October 7, 2024, one year after the Hamas attack on Israel that killed nearly 800 civilians.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed that the man, Muhammed Shahzeb Khan, intended to commit the shooting in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a militant Islamist group designated as a terrorist organization by both the US and Canada. US prosecutors charged Khan with one count of attempted provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The FBI’s criminal complaint against Khan alleges that he informed two undercover law enforcement officers about his plans to sneak over the Canada-US border with the help of a human smuggler and target the NYC Jewish center. Khan allegedly told the officers “‘New york is perfect to target jews’ because it has the ‘largest Jewish population In america,’ and, as such, ‘even if we dont attack a[n] Event[,] we could rack up easily a lot of jews.’” The complaint also alleged that Khan told the undercover officers to acquire weapons for the attack.

Khan was arrested while nearing the Canada-US border on September 4. He is scheduled to appear in a Canadian court on September 13.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported in July that antisemitic incidents in the US increased by 361 percent since the October 7 attacks. Similar trends have been reported across the globe, with the UK’s Metropolitan Police reporting that antisemitic hate crimes rose 1350 percent in the month following October 7. Relatedly, Islamophobic incidents in the UK also rose more than 300 percent since the attacks, according to a February report.

The US has seen antisemitic shootings in recent years, with the deadliest occurring on October 27, 2018, when a white nationalist gunman killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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