In June, an FBI informant met with a South Florida man who expressed his desire to join an anti-government militia and build a bomb targeting a New York City landmark, authorities say. (Dreamstime/TNS)
MIAMI (Tribune News Service) — In June, an FBI informant met with a South Florida man who expressed his desire to join an anti-government militia and build a bomb targeting a New York City landmark, authorities say.
His plan: to plant an improvised explosive device outside the New York Stock Exchange the week before Thanksgiving, according to the FBI.
Federal agents, who had been on to the suspect for months, thwarted his planned bombing attack before the target date. Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, 30, of Coral Springs, now faces an arraignment on Dec. 4 in Miami federal court on charges of attempting to use an explosive device to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce.
Since Nov. 20, Yener has been detained at a federal lock-up in Miami after his public defender and prosecutors agreed to his detention before trial.
According to a criminal complaint, the FBI started an investigation in February after receiving a tip that Yener was storing bomb-making designs in an unlocked storage unit.
The following month, FBI agents contacted Yener. With his consent and a warrant, they searched the unit and found spiral notebooks, bomb-making sketches, watches with timers, circuit boards and other electronics for creating explosive devices, according to an affidavit filed with the complaint.
Among the writings in his notebook: “Be prepared brothers. The day for battle is near, many of our enemies are arming themselves. Soon the United States and her allies will attack.”
Yener described one drawing as a “Bouncing Betty-style landmine,” noting that, when tripped, the device “expels its explosive charge into the air so the charge detonates above ground level for maximum effect,” the affidavit says. Yener admitted that he had created what he described as “rockets” that utilized precise chemical mixtures to launch, adding that the chemical mixtures were very “volatile.”
FBI agents also said they uncovered multiple internet searches on Yener’s Google account for bomb-making information dating back to 2017.
They also discovered that Yener had worked at a Coconut Creek restaurant but was fired in July 2023 after making violent threats.
His supervisor at the restaurant told FBI agents that Yener was fired after he “threatened to bring guns to the restaurant and target his co-workers based on Yener’s belief that those co-workers had stolen [his] money,” according to the affidavit.
Yener told his co-workers, ‘I’m about to go Parkland shooter in this place,’ referring to the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooter who killed 17 students and faculty in 2018.
After the agents questioned him, an FBI agent engaged Yener in June. He talked about his desire to join an anti-U.S. militia group and develop an explosive device, the affidavit says.
Yener later met with an FBI employee who he believed to be part of a militia and “identified the New York Stock Exchange as the location for deploying and detonating the improvised explosive device and his target date for carrying out the bombing was the week of November 18, 2024,” the affidavit says. “His stated motivation for bombing the NYSE was to attain a ‘reboot’ and/or ‘reset ‘of the United States government.”
Yener said he wanted to construct a remote-trigger for the explosive device and conduct research on where to plant the bomb outside the stock exchange at 11 Wall Street. According to the affidavit, he tasked FBI undercover employees with procuring an explosive element for the device, conducting surveillance of the stock exchange, shooting photos of the building, and picking the location for detonating the bomb.
According to the affidavit, Yener planned on wearing a disguise when planting the bomb outside the stock exchange. He also recorded a message to be distributed to the news media about his reasons for the attack.
In the affidavit, investigators said Yener anticipated that the explosion would be “like a small nuke went off” and that “[a]nything outside” the stock exchange “will be wiped out” and “anything inside there would be killed.”
The case, investigated by the FBI with assistance from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Coral Springs Police, is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Thakur and Abbie Waxman and Justice Department trial attorney Elisa Poteat.
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