An alleged ISIS supporter who came to Ontario on a study permit has pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges in New York, amid allegations he planned a shooting rampage at a Jewish centre in Brooklyn.
Public records show Muhammad Shahzeb Khan was arraigned in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, after being extradited to the U.S. from a Canadian jail earlier this week.
Prosecutors said Khan, a 20-year-old Pakistani citizen, is charged with:
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Attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
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Attempting to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
If convicted, he faces life in prison. His attorneys, Andrew Dalack and Marne Lenox, declined to comment on the case.
Khan was arrested last September by heavily armed RCMP officers near a gas station in Ormstown, Que., roughly 20 kilometres from the New York state border. He had arranged for a human smuggler to help him cross into the U.S., according to prosecutors.
Khan “planned to use automatic weapons to kill as many members of our Jewish community as possible, all in support of ISIS,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
An FBI investigation revealed Khan allegedly intended to carry out his plot on or around the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“If we succeed with our plan,” Khan purportedly wrote on an encrypted chat platform, “this would be the largest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.”
Khan remains in custody and is scheduled to return to U.S. District Court in September. A trial date has not been set.
CBC News previously reported how his social media activity – under the alias “Shahzeb Jadoon” – first caught the eye of an FBI informant in Oct. 2023, just four months after he moved to the Toronto area.
New court documents reveal the FBI tracked Muhammad Shahzeb Khan online for months while he lived in Mississauga, Ont., crafting an ISIS-inspired mass murder of Jews in New York. Khan was arrested near the Quebec-New York border in September.
Immigration records released by a Canadian parliamentary committee show Khan had been granted a study permit in April 2023 and landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport the following June.
The federal immigration department’s security assessment had not identified “any risk indicators,” so Khan’s file was not sent for further screening by intelligence service CSIS, or the Canada Border Services Agency.
According to evidence filed in Quebec Superior Court as part of the extradition process, Khan had asked would-be accomplices to acquire hunting knives, camouflage shirts, tactical vests, AR-style rifles and “900 rounds of ammunition and 10 magazines each.”
“Brothers … we are going to nyc to slaughter them,” Khan allegedly wrote.
Around the same time, a self-styled immigration consultant in Mississauga, Ont., said Khan had been in the process of claiming refugee status in Canada, on the basis of his sexual orientation.
“He said he was gay,” Fazal Qadeer told CBC in an interview last year.
Khan told the Quebec court in February that had agreed to be extradited to stand trial in New York.
“We will prosecute this man to the fullest extent of the law,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said this week.
