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The improvised explosive devices thrown near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence during weekend protests are being investigated as part of an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism,” the city’s police commissioner said Monday.
Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, and Emir Balat, 18, are facing federal charges in connection with the Saturday incident. Both were charged with unlawfully possessing and using a “weapon of mass destruction,” transporting explosives, and attempting to aid a “designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to a federal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern New York.
Authorities do “not have information that connects this investigation to what is going on overseas in Iran,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a Monday news conference, referring to the U.S. and Israeli joint military offensive there.
Tisch said the objects thrown Saturday during an anti-Islam demonstration and counterprotest near Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, were “improvised explosive devices made to injure, maim or worse.”
She added that a third suspicious device tested negative for explosive material. At least one of the devices contained a dangerous and highly volatile homemade explosive. None of the devices detonated, and nobody was injured.
In federal court on Monday, attorneys for both Balat and Kayumi requested protective custody for their clients at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The two will be held pending an application for bail.
“This is a publicly declared terror trial, this is the city of New York, he’s 18, and he’s exposed to the general population of what is called a hell hole, and we want to keep him protected,” Mehdi Essmidi, Balat’s attorney, told NBC News after the hearing.
Essmidi added that Balat is a senior at a Pennsylvania high school who was three classes from graduation and has “complicated stuff going on in his personal life.”
The federal complaint alleges that Balat and Kayumi “attempted to detonate two apparent explosive devices in the vicinity of Gracie Mansion, in Manhattan, New York, during a protest and counter-protest in the area.”
Preliminary testing results of one of the devices indicated it contained “a highly volatile explosive material used in multiple terrorist attacks over the last decade,” the complaint says.
The complaint alleges that Balat and Kayumi made statements about ISIS when they were arrested. It adds that body camera footage from the New York City police officers who arrested Kayumi captured the 19-year-old responding “ISIS” to someone in the crowd asking why he had done this.
In the complaint, federal law enforcement also alleged that both suspects referred to ISIS in recorded post-arrest statements they made after receiving and waiving their Miranda rights, with Balat writing in a piece of paper that he “pledge[d] [] allegience [sic] to the Islamic State.”
Tisch declined to comment during a press conference Monday afternoon when asked whether police suspected the teens were recruited or self-radicalized, though Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner broadly addressed a rise on online youth radicalization.
“It is not limited to ISIS, it’s across the ideological spectrum,” Weiner said.
Weiner said the NYPD and FBI did “controlled detonations” of the IED devices from the protest. “It revealed a significant explosion,” she said, adding the devices would have caused “death” and “destruction.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that they “indicted the two alleged ISIS-inspired terrorists who attempted to bomb a protest in New York City.”
“We will not allow ISIS’s poisonous, anti-American ideology to threaten this nation. Our law enforcement officers will remain vigilant,” Bondi said Monday.
An automated license plate reader captured the car that Barat and Kayumi were driving into New York City from New Jersey about an hour before the noontime incident in a vehicle registered to one of Balat’s relatives, according to the complaint.
The car was found a few blocks from where they were arrested. Inside, authorities found “a hobby fuse, an empty metal can” and a notebook with a handwritten list of chemical ingredients and components that could be used to build explosives, according to the compaint.
Barat and Kayumi are both residents of Pennsylvania. Prior to his arrest, Kayumi’s mother had filed a missing person report saying she last saw him around Saturday morning.
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, confirmed Monday that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were at a museum in Brooklyn when the improvised explosive device was thrown. (Authorities previously said the two were inside Gracie Mansion during the incident.)
Mamdani, who addressed reporters at the start of Monday’s news conference, described the suspects as two men who “traveled from Pennsylvania and attempted to bring violence to New York City.”
“They are suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism. There is a video of these two individuals throwing two devices towards the protest,” Mamdani said.
The anti-Muslim demonstration, led by conservative influencer Jake Lang and called “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer,” drew roughly 20 people, according to police.
The counterprotest drew about 125 demonstrators at its peak.
“Thanks to the swift and decisive actions of NYPD officers at the scene, both men were immediately taken into custody and the devices they brought taken off of our streets,” Mamdani said.
“I want to commend the officers who were on site,” the mayor added. “They faced a chaotic situation that very quickly could have become far more dangerous.”
Tisch did not specify why investigators are probing links between the incident and the Islamic State terrorist group. The federal criminal complaint against the two suspects will be unsealed Monday afternoon, she said.
In remarks to reporters Monday, Mamdani characterized the anti-Muslim demonstration as a “vile protest rooted in white supremacy.”
He added that “anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the 1 million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home.”
The mayor then defended the right of the city’s residents to protest peacefully, saying in part: “While I find this protest appalling, I will not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen.”
“Ours is a free society where the right to peaceful protest is sacred,” he said. “It does not belong only to those we agree with. It belongs to everyone. I will defend that right every day that I am mayor, even when those protesting say things that I abhor.”
Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.
Nicole Acevedo is a news reporter for NBC News.
Jonathan Dienst is chief justice contributor for NBC News and chief investigative reporter for WNBC-TV in New York.
Tom Winter is NBC’s National Law Enforcement and Intelligence Correspondent.
Chloe Atkins reports for the NBC News National Security and Law Unit, based in New York.
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