CNN
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An 18-year-old New Jersey man was arrested Thursday after sending a manifesto on-line with threats to assault a synagogue and Jewish folks, federal prosecutors say.

Omar Alkattoul, a Sayreville resident, is charged with a depend of transmitting a menace in interstate and overseas commerce earlier this month, in line with a felony criticism and an announcement from Philip Sellinger, US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. His legal professional has not but been recognized.

Alkattoul, who was scheduled to look earlier than US Magistrate Judge Jessica Allen in Newark Thursday afternoon, faces a most penalty of 5 years in jail and a $250,000 superb if convicted, the assertion stated.

“No one should be targeted for violence or with acts of hate because of how they worship,” Sellinger stated within the assertion. “According to the complaint, this defendant used social media to send a manifesto containing a threat to attack a synagogue based on his hatred of Jews.”

Court paperwork allege Alkattoul on November 1 despatched by way of social media a hyperlink to a doc titled “When Swords Collide” and instructed one other individual he authored the manifesto “in the context of an attack on Jews.”

“I am the attacker and I would like to introduce myself,” the suspect wrote, in line with court docket paperwork.

In the doc Alkattoul wrote that he “did target a synagogue for a really good reason” and stated “the motive of this attack is hatred towards Jews and their heinous acts,” in line with the criticism.

The suspect shared the doc with a number of folks by way of an unnamed social media software, authorities stated. One of these folks knowledgeable regulation enforcement.

Alkattoul instructed authorities he wrote the doc whereas “live action role playing” and “imagined being al-Qaeda and carrying out an attack,” in line with the criticism.

After being interviewed by regulation enforcement, Alkattoul was voluntarily transferred to a hospital for an examination, the criticism stated.

At the hospital, the criticism alleges, the suspect instructed an worker that he had been speaking on social media “with someone he believed to be in al-Qaeda” who he instructed of his plan to finally “blow up a synagogue.”

CNN reported earlier this month concerning the broad menace to synagogues in New Jersey, and that a web-based antisemitic submit in a discussion board frequented by extremists had prompted an FBI alert.

Authorities have been alarmed as a result of the submit was written as if an assault had already occurred, in line with sources. That factored considerably into the urgency of finding the suspect and likewise releasing the broad warning to the Jewish group, sources stated.

The FBI in Newark tweeted on November 3 that it had obtained “credible information of a broad threat to synagogues” within the state.

While no particular goal, timing or plan was talked about, the character of the submit created sufficient concern that the FBI determined to situation a common warning out of an abundance of warning.

Over the previous few years, antisemitic incidents have risen within the US, with 942 incidents in 2015 leaping to 2,717 tracked in 2021 by the Anti-Defamation League.