Saturday, August 24, 2019

ISIS-inspired Queens women plead guilty to NYC bomb plot

ISIS-inspired Queens women plead guilty to NYC bomb plot




Two terror fangirls from Queens who went gaga for al Qaeda and ISIS — including one who carried around Osama bin Laden’s photo — copped to bomb-building charges Friday that could land them in prison for up to 20 years.
Noelle Velentzas, 31, and Asia Siddiqui, 35, could wind up in prison for 20 years after pleading guilty in Brooklyn federal court to attempting to build a weapon of mass destruction.
Between 2013 and 2015, the pair plotted to set off explosives in New York. They researched how to make car bombs and visited Home Depot in Queens to browse for bomb-building materials with a woman they knew as “Mel” — who was actually an undercover agent who caught them on tape talking about their murderous fantasies.
“Noelle, Mel and I discussed the need to prepare for jihad,” Siddiqui told Brooklyn federal Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., reading from a prepared written statement.
The two women taught each other chemistry and electrical skills that could be used to build bombs — drawing inspiration from terror attacks launched on US soil like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
In a December 27, 2014, meeting, the women also discussed the possibility of attacking the funeral for NYPD officer Rafael Ramos, who was fatally shot alongside partner Wenjian Liu while they sat in their patrol car in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The two would-be bombers were blatant about their support for terrorist groups abroad, court papers state, gleefully watching online videos of a suicide bombing and of ISIS fighters beheading Syrian soldiers.
“Why we can’t be some real bad bitches?” Velentzas said in one meeting as she took a knife from her bra and showed Siddiqui and the informant how to stab someone. 
On one occasion, Velentzas showed the informant her phone, which had a photo of Osama bin Laden — who she called one of her heroes — set as her screen pic. 
Siddiqui, meanwhile, had been in repeated contact with members of al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, according to court papers, and was close with a prominent figure within the group. 
Siddiqui also tried her hand at gruesome terrorist poetry in which she called for readers to engage in violence and find truth “through fists and slit throats.” 
“Velentzas and Siddiqui were intent on waging violent jihad here in the United States, researching at length historical terrorist attacks on US soil, educating themselves on how to turn propane tanks into explosive devices, and dreaming up plans to kill Americans on our own turf,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney said in a news release.
Siddiqui and Velentzas are due back in court in December for sentencing.

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