WASHINGTON, Feb 9:
A 29-year-old New York City man has been arrested while he was about to catch a flight to Pakistan to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), in a dangerous sign that the Pakistan-based terror group, which carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, has expanded its tentacles in the US.
In another instance of growing influence of the LeT in the US and radicalisation of American youths, a teenager in Texas was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the terror group and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training.
Federal prosecutors on Friday announced that they arrested the Manhattan man, Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion, on Thursday night at John F Kennedy International Airport as he was about to board an international flight with Pakistan being his final destination.
Prosecutors say Encarnacion went online to try to join the terrorist organisation. Encarnacion allegedly told an unnamed co-conspirator in November that he wanted to hook up with Pakistani terror group which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
I want to execute. I want to behead. Shoot, Encarnacion told an undercover agent, the complaint alleges.
“Encarnacion allegedly attempted to travel to Pakistan to join a foreign terrorist organisation and conspired with another individual to provide that organisation with material support,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
Encarnacion aka “Jihadistsoldgier”, “Jihadinhear”, “Jihadinheart” and “Lionofthegood,” plotted to travel to Pakistan to join and train with LeT, said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman.
“Encarnacion not only expressed a desire to “execute and behead people,” he scheduled travel and almost boarded a plane so he could go learn how to become a terrorist,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr.
In the southern state of Texas, 18-year-old Michael Kyle Sewell was charged by the FBI with using social media to recruit people on behalf of the LeT and send them to Pakistan for terrorist training.
The arrest of the New Yorker and the charges against the Texas teenager – who do not appear to be of South Asian origin as has been the case in previous such arrests – has set the alarm bells ringing among the law enforcement agencies in the US.
The arrests have thrown the spotlight on issues of homegrown terrorism and radicalisation of American youths, a situation that authorities have dreaded post Mumbai-terrorist attack.
Based out of Pakistan, the LeT is a UN and US designated global terrorist organisation and has carried out several terrorist attacks inside India, including the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008 that took the lives of 166 people including several Americans.
“These organisations are using the internet and social media to appeal to the most barbaric impulses in people, and train them to kill,” Sweeney Jr added. (PTI)
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