Posted on August 28, 2019

ISIS-Inspired Queens Women Plead Guilty to NYC Bomb Plot

Andrew Denney, New York Post, August 23, 2019

Two terror fangirls from Queens who went gaga for al Qaeda and ISIS — including one who carried around Osama bin Laden’s photo — copped to bomb-building charges Friday that could land them in prison for up to 20 years.

Noelle Velentzas, 31, and Asia Siddiqui, 35, could wind up in prison for 20 years after pleading guilty in Brooklyn federal court to attempting to build a weapon of mass destruction.

Between 2013 and 2015, the pair plotted to set off explosives in New York. They researched how to make car bombs and visited Home Depot in Queens to browse for bomb-building materials with a woman they knew as “Mel” — who was actually an undercover agent who caught them on tape talking about their murderous fantasies.

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In a December 27, 2014, meeting, the women also discussed the possibility of attacking the funeral for NYPD officer Rafael Ramos, who was fatally shot alongside partner Wenjian Liu while they sat in their patrol car in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The two would-be bombers were blatant about their support for terrorist groups abroad, court papers state, gleefully watching online videos of a suicide bombing and of ISIS fighters beheading Syrian soldiers.

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Siddiqui, meanwhile, had been in repeated contact with members of al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, according to court papers, and was close with a prominent figure within the group.

Siddiqui also tried her hand at gruesome terrorist poetry in which she called for readers to engage in violence and find truth “through fists and slit throats.”

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