Philadelphia teen accused of buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of foreign terror group

A 17-year-old from West Philadelphia has been charged with buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of a foreign terrorist group, state and federal authorities announced Monday.

The teen, whom prosecutors declined to name because he is a juvenile, was arrested Friday at his home in the Wynnefield section of the city, said Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office.

Investigators say he’d purchased materials including chemicals, wiring, and tactical equipment associated with improvised explosive devices and conducted “generalized research” on potential targets. The teen had also been “taking steps to travel overseas for the purpose of joining or supporting terrorist activity,” Maguire said, though she declined to offer specifics.

The teen faces state felony charges including possessing weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy, arson, and causing or risking a catastrophe — the most serious of which carry prison terms of up to 20 years. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said his office was required by law to charge the teen in juvenile court, but that prosecutors would seek to move his case into the adult court system.

It was not immediately clear Monday whether the teen had retained a lawyer. And Krasner said he aimed to keep the teen behind bars until the case is resolved.

“The young man who is under arrest was an aspiring terrorist,” Krasner said. “He was not merely thinking but was doing things that are deeply disturbing and presented a grave danger to everyone — himself, his family, the block where he lives, and frankly, people everywhere in Philadelphia and potentially people around the country or even overseas.”

Although Krasner and the FBI announced the case at a news conference Monday, they kept many of the details of their investigation and the suspect at its center under wraps, citing his age and the ongoing nature of the probe.

However, sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the arrest occurred on the 5900 block of Woodbine Avenue at the home of Qawi Abdul-Rahman, a Philadelphia defense attorney who unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Democratic primary for Common Pleas Court judge.

Abdul-Rahman did not return requests for comment Monday.

Maguire, meanwhile, said the teenager first came to the FBI’s attention through contacts he’d made over social media with members of a Syrian group known as Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, or KTJ.

The U.S. State Department designated KTJ as a foreign terror organization last year. The group, which has claimed affiliation with ISIS, has taken credit for deadly terrorist strikes, including a 2017 attack on a subway in St. Petersburg, Russia, that killed 14 people and injured scores more, as well as a suicide bombing on a Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in 2016.

Prosecutors said they found that the teen’s Instagram account had communicated with a KTJ account in March and April 2023. And his WhatsApp account displayed a banner associated with two terrorist groups: first, the Chechnya-based Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyrs’ Brigade, and later an image connected to ISIS.

But the investigation into the teen entered a new phase over the last several weeks after he began amassing equipment including tactical gear, wiring, chemicals, and devices often used as detonators, Maguire said.

FBI agents surveilled him as he bought materials to make homemade bombs on Aug. 7, and on Aug. 8 U.S. Customs and Border Protection “provided records revealing 14 international shipments of military and tactical gear” to his house, prosecutors said in a statement. They added that he’d also taken steps toward assembling them into explosives and testing them in recent weeks.

“These purchases quickly escalated this case into a threat and a priority for our office,” Maguire said. “This was now a situation where we believe public safety was at risk.”

As agents descended on his home Friday, they found what Maguire described as a “significant number” of firearms but no completed bombs in the house. She declined to elaborate on whom those guns belonged to or where they were stored.

“This investigation is very much ongoing,” she said.

The teenager’s arrest came nearly a month after federal prosecutors charged a sophomore at Pennsylvania State University’s Abington campus with lying to the FBI about his contacts with ISIS sympathizers and efforts to assist an averted terror attack in Chicago last year.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the case against that defendant — Kamal Fataliev, 19, of Philadelphia — is not connected to the charges filed against the teenager charged Monday.

She declined to comment about the decision by federal prosecutors to defer the case announced Monday to Krasner’s office.

While juveniles are rarely charged in the federal courts — which unlike state courts do not have a dedicated system for handling cases involving youths — exceptions are occasionally made.

In 2011, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia charged then-17-year-old Mohammad Hassan Khalid, of Baltimore, with supporting an international terror cell that counted among its members Colleen LaRose, the Montgomery County woman known online by the moniker “Jihad Jane.”

At the time, Khalid was the youngest person ever charged with U.S. terrorism offenses. A federal judge certified him to face charges as an adult. He ultimately pleaded guilty, cooperated for years with FBI probes of al-Qaeda-connected terror groups, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.