Third man arrested in connection to alleged Pamela Geller beheading plot

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/12/third-arrest-alleged-pamela-geller-beheading-plot

Version 0 of 1.

Related: Pamela Geller was target of alleged Boston terrorist, police confirm

A third man has been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to behead the controversial political commentator Pamela Geller.

Nicholas Rovinski, a 24-year-old from Rhode Island who went by the name of Nuh Amriki aka Nuh al Andalusi, was arrested on Thursday and charged with conspiring to provide material support to Isis, the US attorney’s office for Massachusetts said on Friday.

David Wright, 25, who went by the name of Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq, was arrested and charged earlier in June with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Wright was also charged on Friday with conspiracy to provide support to Isis.

A third conspirator, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim – who was Wright’s uncle – was shot and killed by law enforcement officers in Rosindale, Massachusetts, on 2 June.

They planned to support Isis by killing people in the US, according to the US attorney’s office.

According to the Daily Beast, Rahim had been under investigation by the joint terrorism taskforce for several weeks, and had just purchased a Bowie knife, telling Wright: “You know it’s good for carving wood and like, you know, carving sculptures … and you know.”

He had also “liked” the Islamic State on Facebook, the Daily Beast reported.

According to the complaint filed after his death, Rahim drew the knife on an armed group of plainclothes taskforce officers, two of whom shot him. He died at the scene.

The state attorney’s office said in a statement that the three conspired to attack and behead “a resident of New York, who had organized a conference in Garland, Texas, on 3 May 2015, featuring cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad”.

This was Geller, a figure known for anti-Muslim statements who came to prominence when she vocally opposed the construction of an Islamic community centre near Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers that were brought down on 11 September 2001.

Later, Geller masterminded an advertising campaign to run on New York buses which featured messages critical of Islam. One of the ads also carried a picture of Adolf Hitler. The campaign was later cancelled.

In May, Geller organised a competition to see who could draw the best cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in Garland, Texas, nominally as a response to the attacks earlier this year on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Two gunmen attacked the event, wounding a security guard before both were killed.

According to the US attorney’s office, the three conspirators changed their plans on 2 June, alleging that in a phone call between Rahim and Wright the former said he no longer planned to attack Geller and instead planned to attack police officers in Massachusetts.

If found guilty, the two face up to 15 years’ imprisonment, supervised release for life and fines of up to $250,000.