New York arrests revive US lone-wolf attack fears
February 27, 2015
FBI agents arrested Akhror Saidakhmetov, 19, at John F. Kennedy airport allegedly attempting to board a flight to Istanbul and Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 24, at home in Brooklyn after he had repeatedly threatened to kill President Barack Obama.
The pair had been tailed for months by federal agents and were allegedly recorded plotting to wage jihad with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, or kill US police and FBI officers.
A third New York resident, Abror Habibov, 30, was arrested in Florida accused of giving Saidakhmetov hundreds of dollars.
FBI Director James Comey has said IS sympathizers are under investigation across the entire country.
"This isn´t a New York phenomenon or a Washington phenomenon. This is all 50 states and in ways that are very hard to see," he told the National Association of Attorneys General on Wednesday.
New York police commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters that the threat was real. "This is the concern about the lone wolf inspired to act without ever going to the Mideast," he said.
Three people were killed and 264 wounded when the Boston Marathon was bombed in April 2013, attacks blamed on two brothers of Chechen origin who had been living in the United States for years.
Deadly attacks already this year by homegrown extremists in Paris and Copenhagen have set Western security officials on edge.
US intelligence officials believe more than 20,000 volunteers from around the world, including more than 150 Americans, have gone to Syria to link up with extremists.
In Europe, around 4,000 young people are estimated to have joined up, including three British schoolgirls believed to have been smuggled across the Turkish border into Syria last week.
On Thursday, the masked IS extremist accused of beheading British and American hostages and nicknamed "Jihadi John" was named as Kuwaiti-born London computer programmer Mohammed Emwazi.
