What happened
Federal prosecutors Monday announced charges against two Michigan men for allegedly planning a Halloween terrorist attack on LGBTQ+ bars in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale. The criminal complaint alleged that Momed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, both 20, were inspired to violence by the Islamic State group’s extremism.
Who said what
Ali and Mahmoud, arrested Friday along with an unidentified minor, were charged with receiving and transferring guns and ammunition for terrorism. The FBI reported that a search of their homes and a storage unit “turned up tactical vests and backpacks, AR-15-style rifles, ammunition, loaded handguns and GoPro cameras,” The Associated Press said.
The criminal complaint said Ali and Mahmoud were part of a larger group that shared extremist and ISIS-related material in encrypted group chats secretly monitored during a yearlong investigation. They allegedly spent months planning and training for the thwarted attack. “I don’t think there was a planned attack,” their lawyer Amir Makled told the Detroit Free Press yesterday. “These kids are gamers, gamers are weird in the way they talk to each other,” he told the newspaper on Saturday.
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What next?
At a brief court hearing Monday, Ali and Mahoud were ordered detained until a Nov. 10 hearing, when “both sides will argue whether they should be released on bond, or remain locked up pending the outcome of their cases,” the Free Press said.
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