Law enforcement officials on Thursday announced charges against a man in connection to a “broad threat to synagogues” across New Jersey identified last week.
Authorities identified the individual as Omar Alkattoul, 18, of Sayreville, New Jersey, and said he was arrested and charged with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce. He is set to appear in court on Thursday afternoon.
“No one should be targeted for violence or with acts of hate because of how they worship,” New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger said in a statement. “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.”
According to court documents, Alkattoul had written a document entitled “When Swords Collide,” which he said was “in the context of an attack on Jews.” Alkattoul shared the document with an unnamed individual, who subsequently alerted authorities.
The complaint also states that he expressed a desire to kill as “an ‘act of revenge’ for the death of Muslims.”
“When we learn of credible threats to our community – whether based in hate toward religion, race, sexual orientation, or gender – we call on law enforcement and community partners to assist in identifying and mitigating that threat,” Special Agent in Charge James E. Dennehy said in a statement. “Let it be known that when a threat of violence comes to our attention, the FBI and our partners will respond to keep the public safe.”
The charge facing Alkattoul carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.
Alkattoul allegedly transmitted the document electronically on Nov. 1, and New Jersey authorities issued an alert to local synagogues on Nov. 3.
“The FBI has received credible information of a broad threat to synagogues in NJ,” law enforcement officials wrote at the time. “We ask at this time that you take all security precautions to protect your community and facility.”
The next day, the FBI Newark office wrote: “We identified the source of the threat who no longer poses a danger to the community. As always, we would like to remind the public, to remain vigilant and if they overseve suspicious activity to report it to law enforcement immediately.”
Public warnings about nonspecific threats against Jewish institutions, made by a variety of groups including Christian supremacists and Islamist extremists, aren’t unusual in the New York City metropolitan area, and many turn out to be false alarms. But the area has also seen deadly attacks.
Five years ago, two New Jersey men were sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of a series of attacks in 2012 that included the firebombings of two synagogues. They also threw a Molotov cocktail into the home of a rabbi as he slept with his wife and children.
In 2019, a man stabbed five people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City, fatally wounding one person.
Chabad Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, director of Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City, helped the community deal with an antisemitic shooting rampage in Jersey City in December 2019 that killed three people in a Jewish grocery and a police officer in a nearby cemetery.
“Jewish people all over, and particularly identifiable Jewish people, are concerned and worried,” he said. “We recognize that it’s not only, God forbid, if someone wants to or does something terrible. It comes back to saying something antisemitic. It has that trickle-down effect.”
The heightened state of vigilance called for on Thursday by an organization that advises Jewish communities on safety and security does not need to be maintained now that a suspect has been identified and questioned, said Craig Fifer, a spokesperson for the group, Secure Community Network.
But, he added, individual Jewish communities need to decide what level of security is right for them.
“We encourage that people go ahead and live their Jewish lives,” he said. “This really is a bigger conversation not tied to any one particular threat.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
