Ontario man stabbed U.S. corrections officers while serving prison sentence for foiled ISIS attack: DOJ

The words Department of Justice are displayed at the FBI field office in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

A 27-year-old man from Mississauga, Ont., who’s serving a prison sentence in the U.S. for his role in a thwarted 2016 terrorist attack in the name of ISIS, has pleaded guilty to stabbing two correctional officers with a weapon he made from a steel desk in his cell.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy’s guilty plea in a news release issued Tuesday in connection with the incident that occurred on Dec. 7, 2020.

Officials say El Bahnasawy was an inmate at United State Penitentiary Allenwood in Pennsylvania at the time of the attack, after he was found guilty in 2018 of plotting “the next 9/11” in New York City.

They say El Bahnasawy stabbed one officer in the head and face and another in the hand as she responded to assist. The first officer lost his right eye as a result of the attack.

“When El Bahnasawy was restrained, a note was found in his sock that read, ‘This is a terrorist attack for the Islamic State.’ A pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was also found taped to the inside of a locker door in Bahnasawy’s prison cell,” the news release read.

He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of assault, assault with intent to commit murder and possession of contraband inside a prison, as well as providing material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

El Bahnasawy was previously sentenced to 40 years in prison for plotting to carry out a series of orchestrated attacks in New York in support of ISIS.

U.S. law enforcement said the Canadian had used encrypted electronic messaging applications to coordinate with Talha Haroon, a 20-year-old U.S. resident who was living in Pakistan, and Russell Salic, a 38-year-old Philippines citizen and resident, to bomb and shoot heavily populated areas of the city during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2016.

“He planned to detonate bombs in Times Square and the New York City subway system, and to shoot civilians at concert venues. Demonstrating his commitment to carry out the attacks, El Bahnasawy pinpointed bomb locations on a map of the subway system, and acquired an array of bomb-making materials,” the Department of Justice said at the time.

They said El Bahnasawy had acquired bomb-making materials in the lead up to the foiled plot and had secured a cabin near New York City for building explosive devices and staging the attacks.

Haroon was set to meet El Bahnasawy in New York for the attack and Salic had wired money from the Philippines to the U.S. to fund the operation, according to the Department of Justice.

An FBI agent, who was working undercover, was able to infiltrate the group while posing as an ISIS supporter. In May 2016, then 18-year-old El Bahnasawy was arrested by the FBI with assistance from the RCMP after he travelled from Canada to the New York City to carry out the attacks.

Haroon was arrested in Pakistan in September 2016, and Salic was arrested in the Philippines in April 2017.

El Bahnasawy’s lawyer appealed his conviction in 2019, arguing that the trial judge violated his rights and that the sentence was unreasonably harsh, citing his struggles with mental health.

His defence also submitted that the FBI agent encouraged El Bahnasawy to plan the attacks in New York, but prosecutors maintained the plot was well underway before the two connected.

The appeal was thrown out.

The Department of Justice said the maximum penalty for the offences El Bahnasawy pleaded guilty to is 130 years.