Two women with suspected ISIS ties were arrested Thursday for allegedly trying to make a homemade bomb they intended to detonate in New York City.
Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, are in federal custody after an undercover FBI operation revealed their plans to
build explosives, ABC News reported.
Although it appears their plotting, which involved dissecting previous terrorist bomb plots in the U.S., was in the planning stages with little to no direct action, ABC News said both women appear to have connections to “known or suspected terrorists,” both stateside and overseas.
Velentzas was Facebook friends with Tairod Pugh, recently indicted for his ISIS terror plot, ABC News noted. She and Siddiqui had been meeting with an undercover FBI agent for months, and Velentzas expressed her opinion that there were ways of “pleasing Allah” in the U.S., without going overseas to join ISIS.
"We are living . . . the last war, the big war before the end of day starts, in English they call it Armageddon, we are actually living in that time, it’s not a joke, it starts in Syria," Velentzas allegedly told the undercover agent.
"The investigation has revealed that Velentzas espouses violent jihadist beliefs and has repeatedly expressed an interest in terrorist attacks committed within the
United States," the complaint stated, according to Fox News.
The two women were reportedly considering assembling pressure cooker or propane tank bombs.
"As alleged, the defendants in this case carefully studied how to construct an explosive device to launch an attack on the homeland,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch told Fox.
Siddiqui had already gathered four propane tanks and had instructions on how to build the bomb, the complaint said.
Arrests tied to ISIS plots are becoming commonplace, Fox said, quoting a Heritage Foundation report claiming that a recent Chicago terror plot was the 64th since 9/11.