Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Would-be Bomber of N.Y. Synagogues Pleads Guilty

A man charged with planning to blow up synagogues in New York City pleaded guilty to the state charges against him.

Ahmed Ferhani, 27, an Algerian immigrant living in New York, entered the plea Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. It is the first conviction under a state terror statute that went into effect following the 9/11 attacks.

Ferhani likely will be sentenced to 10 years in prison and face deportation after serving his term.

“By targeting a synagogue, which I knew to be a Jewish house of worship, in this manner I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City, warning them to stop mistreating Muslims,” Ferhani told the judge during his plea, Reuters reported.

Ferhani and his accomplice, who did not appear in court on Wednesday, were arrested after they bought three firearms and what they believed was a live grenade from an undercover police detective. They reportedly had planned to disguise themselves as Chasidic Jews in order to get into the synagogues.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.