Two New York Women Found Guilty Of Teaching, Distributing Information On Weapons Of Mass Destruction
Asia Siddiqui has been sentenced in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York to 15 years for her part in planning to build a bomb for use in a domestic terrorist attack. Siddiqui’s codefendant Noelle Velentzas has also pled guilty for her role in the scheme but has not been sentenced. Her charges are related to a charge of teaching or distributing information pertaining to the making and use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a planned federal crime of violence.
From approximately 2013 to 2015, Siddiqui and Velentzas taught each other the chemistry and electrical skills necessary to create explosives and building detonating devices. The two also conducted research on how to make plastic explosives and how to build a car bomb. The two shopped and acquired the materials needed for their planned domestic terror attack, according to the Department of Justice release.
Siddiqui and Velentzas discussed similar devices used in past terrorist incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing, Oklahoma City bombing, and 1993 World Trade Center attack and researched potential targets of an attack, focusing on law enforcement and military-related targets.
Siddiqui wrote about her interest in terrorist related activity in a prominent radical jihadist magazine.
In a poem called “Take Me to the Lands Where the Eyes Are Cooled,” Siddiqui wrote that she “taste[s] the Truth through fists and slit throats” and that there is “[n]o excuse to sit back and wait – for the skies rain martyrdom.”
When the two defendants were arrested, law enforcement seized propane gas tanks, soldering tools, car bomb instructions, jihadist literature, machetes and several knives from their residences.
“Today’s sentencing is a strong and timely reminder that the NYPD and its partners in law enforcement will never stop pursuing those who, if undetected, would plan and execute acts of terrorism in the United States,” said NYPD Commissioner Dermot F. Shea. “I want to thank the members of the Department of Justice, the FBI and the NYPD for their work each and every day and on this investigation.”