ANI
Friday, March 04, 2011
According to the New York Daily News, Mohamed Alessa and Carlos Almonte have been in custody since their arrest at New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in June last year.
The prosecutors said the pair was planning to wage jihad alongside Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Both men admitted that they were flying to Egypt on their way to join Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia, and they wanted to murder people whose beliefs they viewed as contrary to Muslim law. Al-Shabaab is a group on the US terrorism watch list.
"Through covert recordings and their admissions, Alessa's and Almonte's own words confirm they took steps down a deadly path," U.S. District Attorney Paul Fishman said.
"The defendants planned and trained for a mission that began in their New Jersey neighborhoods and would end with the murder of innocent civilians," he added.
Alessa, 21, is the son of Palestinian immigrants and was born in the U.S., while Almonte, 24, was born in the Dominican Republic and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.