The FBI alleges a Tucson man arrested on terrorism charges claimed to have reached out to a foreign terrorist group for a pressure-cooker-bomb recipe, and that he named potential targets including an Air Force recruitment center in Tucson.
Mahin Khan, 18, was taken into custody Friday. In a court document released Wednesday, the FBI alleges that Khan called himself an “American jihadist” who supports ISIL (also known as ISIS) and said he wanted to perform “a MO” — “likely meaning a martyrdom operation.”
Khan stated in an April 16 telephone conversation that Mission Bay, California, would be “a pretty good target” with a lot of residents, and, asked if he had chosen a target closer to where he lived, mentioned the Tucson recruitment center, the document alleges.
In the same call, Khan said he had reached out to TTP (Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan) asking for a recipe to build a pressure-cooker bomb, according to the document.
The document is a statement from the FBI to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, laying out evidence, or probable cause, to justify the filing of terrorism charges against Khan.
In emails on other dates earlier in 2016, Khan asked a correspondent named Abid Mansoor for weapons, saying he needed assault rifles and pistols — “wanna take out marines and jews,” according to the court document.
He also asked for “cookie recipes,” likely meaning instructions for building an improvised explosive device, the court document alleges. He described himself as 17, wrote that he was “no jok” (one of many misspellings in his emails) and attached a photograph of himself in sunglasses, the document states.
Mansoor is not described in the three-page document, a full page of which was blacked out before a Maricopa County judge authorized its release to public view.
Khan was arrested after a joint operation between the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and FBI, Mia Garcia, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, said Friday. “Khan allegedly conspired to commit acts of terror against government buildings in Pima and Maricopa County,” Garcia said then.
He was being held in the Maricopa County jail without bond on one count each of conspiracy to commit terrorism and terrorism, she said.
Khan’s next court date is a preliminary hearing scheduled for Tuesday, July 12.
