Florida - A Florida man has been arrested and charged with trying to blow up a synagogue with a fake bomb following an FBI sting operation.
James Gonzalo Medina, 40, was accused of intending to use a “weapon of mass destruction” at a synagogue in the city of Aventura near Miami, the US Justice Department said on Monday.
The FBI had earlier placed him under surveillance after he expressed anti-Semitic sentiments to an undercover informant.
The criminal complaint says Medina claimed to have converted to Islam about four years ago and planned to claim that the so-called Islamic State group had planned the attack.
After Medina studied the synagogue, he was given an inert device he believed to be a bomb. He was arrested Friday while en route to the synagogue.
In an April 1 conversation, Medina told the undercover officer that Yom Kippur, one of the most important Jewish holidays, would be “a good day to go and bomb them,” according to the criminal complaint.
He also recorded farewell videos in which he made threats and said goodbye to his family.
“I am a Muslim and I don't like what is going on in this world. I'm going to handle business here in America. Aventura, watch your back. IS is in the house,” the complaint said he declared in one video.
Rabbi Jonathan Berkun and other officials from the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Centre said on Twitter that the synagogue and its affiliated school were open and “operating as usual” on Monday.
“The synagogue was never at risk nor are there any credible threats directed against the congregation at the present time,” they added.
Medina, who was charged Saturday, could face life in prison. He has not yet been indicted.
The FBI employs a network of informants that is estimated to number at least 15 000.
Often well-compensated, they take part in investigations into a wide range of activities from paedophilia and drugs to Islamic extremism.
Critics accuse them of sometimes pressuring vulnerable people to commit crimes.
AFP