A Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for plotting to work with ISIS, a designated foreign terror organization, to blow up a church in Pittsburgh.
The Department of Justice identified the defendant as Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 24, and said he pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of providing material support to ISIS for the unsuccessful plan to attack a church.
The DOJ explained Alowemer distributed multiple instructional documents about how to build and use bombs to an FBI informer that he thought was a fellow ISIS supporter.
"In or around June 2019, Alowemer purchased several items, including nails and acetone (nail polish remover), with the belief that they were necessary to assemble a destructive device and with the intention they be used to construct the explosives that would be detonated in the vicinity of the church," prosecutors said.
The suspect then met several times in an undercover FBI employee and provided details about the plot, giving the federal agent boxes of nails for use in a bomb.
