Woman charged with pledging allegiance to ISIS, plotting to attack NY Capitol
Jessica Bowie, 35, is charged with attempting to provide material support or resources to foreign terror organizations
By Brendan J. Lyons, Alexander MacDougall,
https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/woman-charged-plotting-terror-attack-ny-capitol-22396206.php
"ALBANY — A 35-year-old Albany woman has been arrested on federal charges after she allegedly swore allegiance to the terrorist organization ISIS and unknowingly engaged three FBI informants to help carry out her plans to attack the state Capitol armed with a gun and a massive explosive device, according to court records.
Jessica Bowie, who has ties to Albany and Schenectady, was taken into custody Wednesday following a multi-agency raid of her residence in the 300-block of Sherman Avenue in Albany. Bowie, who converted to Islam five years ago, apparently drew the attention of federal investigators earlier this year when she allegedly espoused anti-American messages under online accounts that contained subscriber information that listed her date of birth.
The federal investigation intensified in July, a month after authorities obtained information about Bowie’s alleged pledge to ISIS, when a confidential informant posed as an ISIS facilitator and communicated with Bowie through an encrypted platform, according to court records. ISIS has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization for more than a decade by the United States.
“Over the course of the next two weeks, Bowie discussed with (the confidential source) her plans to attack the New York State Capitol building in Albany,” according to a federal criminal complaint that charges Bowie with attempting to provide material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.
The criminal complaint alleges that Bowie met with three undercover FBI informants during the past two months, and that she had told them she would rather target the White House but that it would be too difficult.
In a meeting earlier this month with the informants, where they surveyed the state Capitol and Albany City Hall, which is across the street from the Capitol, Bowie allegedly told them: “(I)deally do it on a day when the most amount of senators are there, maybe we time it where there we know there’s a meeting with the senators, try and get a good enough explosive in there to kill the senators and ideally to destroy as much of the building as possible really because this is, this is the capital… a major political hub for the state.”
During the meeting with the informants earlier this month, she allegedly paid one of them money for a gun. During that meeting, she also was given a purported explosive device from one of the informants, according to the FBI.
According to the complaint, she told them: “I want something that’s gonna do the job I don’t want to take this kind of risk and then have it kill what, two or three people what good is that?”
At another meeting with the undercover informants on Wednesday — when she was arrested — Bowie allegedly provided them $150 for a handgun and ammunition. In an online conversation with one of the informants six days earlier, she told one of the informants she was looking for a firearm “that could be hidden on my thigh or hips under clothes… while I prefer rifles I think a handgun is the only logical right now preferably strong enough to cause death and shoot at least some kind of distance but also without being overly expensive.”
Law enforcement officials, at a news conference Thursday afternoon, cast Bowie’s efforts to attack the Capitol as a serious threat.
“She planned to flee the country and one day come back to ‘do more,'’ said Craig L. Tremaroli, FBI special agent in charge of the Albany field office, adding that she also pledged to wage future attacks on the White House and in Times Square in New York City.
“Let this be a message to any individual out there committing, considering similar criminal acts, this FBI will find you under this leadership team, alongside our brilliant partners,” Tremaroli added. “We’re moving more decisively than ever to identify, locate, arrest criminals before they can carry out their alleged plots.”
The federal criminal complaint lists multiple other messages or recorded conversations attributed to Bowie, including an exchange on May 28 in which she told another user, in Arabic, “Praise be to Allah for September 11th,” according to the complaint.
In another exchange on May 8, Bowie, who had adopted the honorific name in Islamic tradition of “Aisha Saif,” allegedly told another online user in a message: “When I can migrate, I will poison these infidels.”
Archived:
https://archive.ph/DZ573
#Antifa #WokeFascism #FreeSpeech #Censorship #FreeAssembly #USpolitics
#MaleViolence #MaleSexualPoltics #CarceralFeminism n #IslamicFundamentalism #Islam #Cults
