Authorities tried to keep Mississauga teen’s terror arrest secret, court documents reveal

Oct 9, 2017 | Media

October 9, 2017

NEW YORK—When Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, then an 18-year-old from Mississauga, was arrested in May 2016, he was secretly detained in New York by federal authorities who hoped to arrest others in a supposed plot to detonate bombs in Times Square and in the subways.

Although federal authorities did eventually arrest two other men, El Bahnasawy’s time in custody did not go exactly to plan.

Shortly after his arrest, jail officials mistakenly moved him into the general population of a federal detention centre in Manhattan, instead of holding him in isolation. That lasted one day — long enough for him to have money stolen from his commissary account.

Several months later, after being allowed to move into the general population, El Bahnasawy was given drugs by another inmate, leading to more complications.

Those details were disclosed in newly unsealed court papers that showed how sensitive prosecutors were to keeping El Bahnasawy’s arrest secret to not tip off a suspect who was believed to be preparing to enter the United States. But they also raised questions about how jail officials handled someone the government viewed as an important defendant.

On Friday, the authorities disclosed that the FBI and New York City Police Department had broken up the plot, which was to be carried out in support of Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and to have taken place during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2016, which began that June.

The authorities said El Bahnasawy was arrested in New Jersey after he entered the United States from Canada. The government said it had also arrested two other plotters overseas, including Talha Haroon, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen living in Pakistan, and Russell Salic, 37, of the Philippines.

The government said the men had also planned to open fire at concert venues in New York, and that their plot had been detailed in communications with an undercover FBI agent, who had posed as a Daesh supporter and convinced them he would work with them.

“We need a really strong bomb,” El Bahnasawy wrote in one message, referring to the Times Square plot, the authorities said.

Shortly after his arrest, El Bahnasawy became the victim of identity theft after he was inadvertently moved from an isolation unit at the Metropolitan Correctional Center into the general population, Adam Johnson, a lawyer at the centre, testified in June 2016, a transcript shows.

Another prisoner apparently used his personal access code to move money from his commissary account to an outside source, Johnson said.

“All signs are pointing toward this person essentially having robbed him electronically,” Johnson testified. A spokesman for the detention centre had no immediate comment on Monday.

It was in September 2016, after El Bahnasawy was allowed to move into the general population, that he obtained Suboxone, a prescription medication used to treat drug addiction, according to a letter from his federal public defenders to the judge. El Bahnasawy — whose lawyers wrote that he had a long history of drug use, treatment and relapse — took the drug and relapsed, according to the letter.

As punishment, jail authorities cut off his family visits for 18 months, leading to objections from his lawyers and a sharp response from a Manhattan judge, Richard M. Berman of U.S. District Court, who said the disciplinary measure “defies common sense.”

The judge’s comments came during a closed hearing in May but were cited in the lawyers’ letter, which was among the newly released filings.

The lawyers’ letter said El Bahnasawy tried unsuccessfully to challenge the loss-of-visitation privileges within the jail system, before raising it with Berman. According to the letter, the judge told Johnson to convey his view to the Bureau of Prisons that the sanction was inappropriate, saying, “I’ve never done this in any case before.”

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El Bahnasawy’s visitation privileges were ultimately restored, the filings show.

After initially consenting to having the case remain secret for a short period, El Bahnasawy’s lawyers argued that the continued secrecy violated his right to a public trial, the filings show. It was not until Friday, when the government announced the charges, that the case became public.

El Bahnasawy pleaded guilty in October 2016 to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other charges. Sabrina Shroff, his lawyer, and James M. Margolin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, each declined to comment.