Former Michigan National Guardsman planned Army base attack for ISIS, prosecutors say
Former Michigan National Guardsman planned Army base attack for ISIS, prosecutors say
Show Caption
Hide Caption
When to call 911 and when to use non-emergency lines
This video explains the importance of knowing when to call 911 for emergencies and when to use non-emergency lines for less critical situations.
DETROIT — A former member of the Michigan Army National Guard has been arrested for allegedly attempting to carry out a mass attack at a U.S. military base in suburban Detroit on behalf of the Islamic State militant group, federal prosecutors said.
Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, of Melvindale, was arrested on May 13 and charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and distributing information related to a destructive device, according to a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Said faces up to 20 years in prison for each count if convicted.
Prosecutors accused Said of planning a mass shooting at the Army's Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command, or TACOM, facility in Warren. The alleged attack was scheduled to occur on May 13, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a news release on May 14.
Prosecutors alleged that Said attempted to conduct the attack in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS. Though ISIS was largely defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019 by a U.S.-led military campaign, the militant group has been operating in the shadows with sleeper cells and has attracted people from across the world to join its ranks.
"ISIS is a brutal terrorist organization which seeks to kill Americans. Helping ISIS or any other terrorist organization prepare or carry out acts of violence is not only a reprehensible crime – it is a threat to our entire nation and way of life," U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. said in a statement on May 14. "Our office will not tolerate such crimes or threats, and we will use the full weight of the law against anyone who engages in terrorism."
New Orleans truck attack: Suspected ISIS member arrested in connection with New Orleans attack, Iraq says
Ex-National Guardsman arrested after launching drone near Army base
During an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation, Said introduced and discussed a plan he devised to conduct a shooting at TACOM, according to an affidavit filed with the complaint. The affidavit alleges that in April, undercover FBI personnel purporting to be ISIS supporters indicated to Said that they intended to carry out his planned attack at the direction of the militant group.
Said "provided assistance to the attack plan he originally devised − one that he believed would result in the death of many American citizens," the affidavit states.
In response to the undercover agents, Said provided material assistance, including armor-piercing ammunition and magazines, according to the affidavit. He also flew his drone over TACOM to conduct operational reconnaissance and surveillance, the affidavit states.
The affidavit further alleged that Said provided training to the undercover agents on the use of firearms and the construction of Molotov cocktails. Prosecutors added that he planned "numerous details of the attack, including how to enter TACOM and which building to target."
Prosecutors said Said was arrested on May 13 − the day of the scheduled attack − after he went to an area near TACOM and launched his drone in support of the plan.
Sue Bai, head of the Department of Justice's National Security Division, said in the news release that the attack was "foiled ... before lives were lost."
Said enlisted in the Michigan Army National Guard around September 2022, attended initial basic training at Fort Moore, Georgia, and reported to the Michigan Army National Guard Taylor Armory after completing initial training, according to the affidavit. It indicated he was discharged from the Michigan Army National Guard around December.
'Heightened threat environment': ICE arrests 8 people suspected of having ties to ISIS terrorist group
Latest case connecting extremism and the U.S. military
Researchers have reported a possible growing trend between the military and extremist activity, according to a December 2024 report from the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START.
The report notes that about 15% of the people charged with committing crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 had connections to the military, and also finds that 'from 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals.'
Experts have long discussed the issue of extremist activity among military ranks and veterans. Recent data has shown that having a military background is the 'single strongest predictor' of violent extremism in America, according to START.
Recent attacks in the United States have heightened concerns about potential terror threats in the country, including the New Year's Day truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people and the Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion.
Though authorities have said the two incidents were unrelated, both involved men with military backgrounds and were investigated as possible terrorist attacks. Authorities later revealed that the suspect in the New Orleans attack was inspired by ISIS. The two incidents remain under investigation.
Contributing: Will Carless, USA TODAY; Reuters
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US-German citizen charged with trying to bomb embassy building in Israel
A dual U.S. and German citizen was arrested in New York for allegedly attempting to firebomb a branch office of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, the Department of Justice said. Joseph Neumeyer, 28, was arrested by FBI special agents on May 25 at John F. Kennedy International Airport after being deported by Israeli authorities, the Justice Department said in a news release. He was charged with attempting to destroy, by means of fire or explosive, the U.S. Embassy, according to an unsealed criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York. Neumeyer made an initial court appearance before a federal judge in New York City and was ordered detained, the Justice Department said. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. "This defendant is charged with planning a devastating attack targeting our embassy in Israel, threatening death to Americans, and President Trump's life," Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. "The Department will not tolerate such violence and will prosecute this defendant to the fullest extent of the law." The arrest came just days after the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C. On the evening of May 21, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were killed after leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect in the shooting, Elias Rodriguez, 31, faces federal and local murder charges along with firearms offenses, authorities said on May 22. U.S. and Israeli officials have condemned the shooting, with Deputy FBI Director Don Bongino calling it an "act of targeted violence." In response to the incident, Israeli embassies immediately increased security measures, USA TODAY previously reported. 'Free Mahmoud': Columbia students boo university president at graduation over Palestinian activist arrest Neumeyer arrived in Israel in April, according to the complaint. He then allegedly traveled to the branch office of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on May 19 with a backpack containing three rudimentary improvised incendiary devices, known as Molotov cocktails, the complaint states. "Without provocation, Neumeyer spit on an Embassy guard as he walked past," the Justice Department said. "Neumeyer managed to break free as the guard attempted to detain him, leaving behind his backpack." Law enforcement officials in Israel searched the backpack, in which they discovered the Molotov cocktails, and later tracked Neumeyer to his hotel, according to the complaint. He was arrested and Israeli authorities returned him to the U.S. on May 25. A further investigation into Neumeyer revealed that earlier in the day on May 19, he posted on social media, saying "join me as I burn down the embassy in Tel Aviv. Death to America, death to Americans, and f---k the west," the complaint states. Federal prosecutors added that investigators believe a social media account used by Neumeyer also allegedly showed that he made posts threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. What we know: Suspect in shooting outside Jewish museum in DC faces local, federal charges The recent incidents come amid growing criticism against Israel after it announced plans to intensify its military campaign against Hamas and to control Gaza, which has been devastated by air and ground operations. More than 53,000 people have been killed and nearly all residents in Gaza have been displaced since the start of the war, according to local health authorities. The war has increased tensions between Israel and much of the international community. Relations were further strained last week when Israeli soldiers fired warning shots near a diplomatic delegation in the occupied West Bank, with Italy and France both summoning Israeli ambassadors to explain what happened, according to Reuters. Incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia in response to the war have also surged across the United States, putting law enforcement agencies on high alert. Advocacy groups have reported a record number of discrimination and hate incidents. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the May 21 shooting "a despicable act of hatred, of antisemitism," saying the incident was connected to the increasingly hostile climate facing Israel over the war in Gaza. Netanyahu himself faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over alleged war crimes in Gaza, which Israeli politicians have condemned as part of a wider effort to delegitimize the state of Israel. Contributing: Reuters (This story was updated to correct a misspelling/typo.) This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Man arrested for attempted bombing attack of the US embassy in Israel
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this'
Barbara Steinmetz survived the Holocaust as a child, fleeing from one country to the next as her Jewish family was stripped of its citizenship. They left Italy for Hungary, then to France and finally Portugal before finding refuge outside of Europe in the Dominican Republic. The first five years of her life with her big sister Margaret and parents was a blur of escapes, never with anything more than what they could carry. The one thing that remained constant: their family stayed together. It's a message that resonates with her nearly 90 years later and why she was marching in Boulder on Sunday. She was part of a small group bringing attention to the Jewish hostages held by Hamas to bring them home when she was attacked. A man threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring 12 people. Steinmetz, 88, told NBC News earlier this week that she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were peacefully demonstrating when they were attacked. "We're Americans. We are better than this,' she told the news outlet. They should be 'kind and decent human beings." Steinmetz spent much of her life trying not to talk about what her family endured. Her father's message to her was always to move to forward. In 1998, she sat down to share her story with the University of Southern California's Shoah project, which documents the lives of Holocaust survivors. In an interview stretching almost three hours, Steinmetz talked about her family's escape, the relatives who died in the war, and the lessons they learned. She was 61 when she did the Shoah interview, one of thousands of 52,000 stories recorded over eight years. 'Family is what's most important,' Steinmetz said. She was too young to remember much from her family leaving Italy in 1938 when Benito Mussolini stripped Jewish people of their citizenship at the direction of Adolf Hitler. What she remembers, she said in the interview, was an atmosphere of trauma. Boulder attack: Firebombing suspect Mohamed Soliman charged with 118 criminal counts Her father, who had run a hotel on the northern Italian coast after leaving Hungary, visited embassies and wrote letters to various countries to try to move his family as Hitler's power grew. Each time, their move was temporary. Each time, they brought only what they could carry. But each time, they stayed together. 'Things were not important, people are important. What you have in your brain and in your heart that is the only thing that's important,' she said. 'And that's totally transportable.' In the past few years, Steinmetz has told her family's story at Holocaust remembrance events and classrooms, libraries and churches. She wants people to understand history to understand that Jewish people are being targeted again. 'Hitler basically took (my father's) life, his dream away…. The rest of life was chasing, running, trying to make a living,' she said. The family eventually settled in Sosúa where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a refugee camp for Jewish people. Life was difficult there, she said, as her family and had to learn to build houses, farm the rocky terrain, and raise their families. Steinmetz and her sister, three years older, were soon sent to a Catholic school, where only the head nun knew they were Jewish. A nun used to let her change the clothes of the Baby Jesus figurine at the church, and for a few minutes each day, she felt like she had a doll. She remembers sleeping next to her sister, and crying inconsolably. 'I never cried again. Years and years and years later, when something happened, my mother and father died, I had a hard time crying. And to this day, I have a hard time crying,' she said. "It is just something I don't do.' The family didn't speak of these moves for years, she would say. "They couldn't help where they were living, it was the only thing they could do to stay alive." The family settled in Boston in 1945, and soon learned much of their family in Europe had died, some in the war, others after. The family would move several times again as her father found different jobs, and she and her sister began going to Jewish summer camps. It was there, she said, that she "fell into the Zionist spirit. I loved the feeling that there would be a state of Israel." She finally felt like she had a community, she said. "These were my people,"she said. "This group was very tight. I was very welcome there. It was a really important part of my life." Her life, she said, was shaped by the war. "It was an experience that affected everything we did," she said, lessons she and her husband, who died in 2010, passed to their three daughters. In all the years of moving from place to place, she remembers they never went to sleep without saying a prayer for their family in Europe, to "bless Aunt Virgie, Emra and Oscar and Pearl... our grandparents." When she met some of this family again in the mid 1950s, "I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life … they were part of my vocabulary." At the end of telling her story, of two hours and 54 minutes of mostly emotionless factual testimony, the interviewer for the Shoah project asks if there is anythingshe hopes people could take away from her story. "We need a broader picture of all of humanity," she said. "We need to educate ourselves and always need to be on top of what is going on in the world and be alert and be responsive to it." And it's why she continues to tell their story, to warn about antisemitism ― even as hate against Jews soars to historic levels. Just last year, Steinmetz showed up to a Boulder City Council meeting in support of her local Jewish community. A woman sat down next to Steinmetz, she recounted in a video interview in June 2024. The woman had a Palestinian flag and a sign that read, "from the river to the sea," a phrase that can be used to promote antisemitism. Steimetz turned to her and said: "Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?'" The woman just turned away. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars," Steinmetz said. People are taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house, she said. But in the following breath, Steinmetz rejected the notion that silence is ever an option. "It is up to each of us to say something, to say something and do something. 'You can say no; I'm a human being just like that other person. We are all humans.'" This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after antisemitic attack
New York Post
38 minutes ago
- New York Post
Biden only hand-signed one pardon during final spree, and it was his most controversial one
Former President Joe Biden only signed one pardon by hand during his final weeks in office, and it was his most controversial one. The Justice Department is reviewing the list of people granted pardons by Biden amid new concerns about his use of an autopen to automatically sign documents and concerns about his state of mind and mental acuity in his final months in office. Biden used his final weeks as commander in chief to grant clemency and pardon more than 1,500 people in what his White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency by a U.S. president. 4 Joe Biden with Donald Trump. POOL/AFP via Getty Images Biden appears to have signed those final pardons, including preemptive pardons for members of his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley and members and staff of the House committee investigating Jan. 6. But the former president signed one by hand for his son. Biden pardoned his son Hunter in December 2024 after vowing to the American people for months he would not do so. Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felony gun offenses during special counsel David Weiss' investigation. The first son was also charged with federal tax crimes over his alleged failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. Before his trial, Hunter Biden entered a surprise guilty plea. Former President Biden in December 2024 announced a blanket pardon that applies to any offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden 'has committed or may have committed' from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. 'From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,' the former president said. 4 Biden's use of an autopen is under scrutiny by Trump. AFP via Getty Images 'There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me — and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. 'I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.' Weiss, who charged Hunter Biden, blasted the former president for pardoning his son, saying his characterizations of the yearslong probe were 'wrong' and 'unfairly' maligned Justice Department officials. Weiss, in the report, blasted the president's decision to pardon and the press release to the public that 'criticized the prosecution of his son as 'selective,' 'unfair,' 'infected' by 'raw politics' and a 'miscarriage of justice.'' 'This statement is gratuitous and wrong,' Weiss wrote in his report. 'Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations.' In another section of the report, Weiss noted that, in light of the presidential pardon, he 'cannot make any additional charging decisions,' adding it would be 'inappropriate' to discuss 'whether additional charges are warranted.' 'Politicians who attack the decisions of career prosecutors as politically motivated when they disagree with the outcome of a case undermine the public's confidence in our criminal justice system,' Weiss wrote. 'The President's statements unfairly impugn the integrity not only of Department of Justice personnel, but all of the public servants making these difficult decisions in good faith. 4 Hunter Biden was pardoned by his father in his last days in office. Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post 'The President's characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong.' Biden's use of an autopen for signatures is under investigation by Attorney General Pam Bondi. President Donald Trump directed Bondi to investigate whether certain individuals working for Biden conspired to deceive the public about his mental state while also exercising his presidential responsibilities by using an autopen. In a memo Wednesday, Trump said the president of the U.S. has a tremendous amount of power and responsibility through the signature. Not only can the signature turn words into laws of the land, but it also appoints individuals to some of the highest positions in government, creates or eliminates national policies and allows prisoners to go free. 'In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden's aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,' Trump wrote. 4 Damilic Corp. president Bob Olding anchors a sheet of paper as the Atlantic Plus, the Signascript tabletop model autopen. AP 'This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden's signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.' He added that Biden has experienced 'serious cognitive decline' for years, and the Department of Justice recently concluded Biden should not stand trial despite clear evidence he broke the law, because of his mental state. 'Biden's cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his presidency were even 'worse' in private, and those closest to him 'tried to hide it' from the public,' Trump said. 'To do so, Biden's advisors during his years in office severely restricted his news conferences and media appearances, and they scripted his conversations with lawmakers, government officials, and donors, all to cover up his inability to discharge his duties.' Fox News Digital's Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
