Two ISIS-inspired Queens women planned WMD attack on NYC: Feds

The feds have arrested two Queens women who they say were radicalized by ISIS and hellbent on “making history” by detonating a mass-casualty bomb in New York City.

“We are living … the last war, the big war before the end of day starts, in English they call it Armageddon, we are actually living in that time, it’s not a joke, it starts in Syria,” 28-year-old Noelle Velentzas told an undercover federal agent, court papers reveal.

She and ex-roommate, 31-year-old Asia Siddiqui were charged conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction on American soil.

ABC News reports that the plot was far more aspirational than operational.Still, the indictment against the would mass murderers contains frightening details:

• The women were Facebook pals with the Air Force veteran Tairod Pugh, who was indicted in his own terror scheme.
• They had contact with a members of” Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
• Siddiqui wrote a poem in an Al Qaeda magazine urging all Muslims to jihad.
• They considered themselves “citizens of the Islamic State.”
• They considered cops easy targets and said they ideally wanted to explode a device at a police funeral.

Federal prosecutors, in announcing the indictment , wrote:

Since at least August 2014, the defendants have allegedly plotted to construct an explosive device for use in a terrorist attack on American soil. In their self-proclaimed effort to “make history,” the defendants researched numerous explosive precursors. For instance, they researched and acquired some of the components of a car bomb, like the one used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; a fertilizer bomb, like the one used in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City; and a pressure cooker bomb, like the one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The investigation recently revealed that the defendants possessed propane gas tanks together with instructions from an online jihadist publication for transforming propane tanks into explosive devices.

Siddiqui had numerous propane gas tanks in her basement flat and “instructions as to how to transform propane gas tanks into bombs,” the feds said.

“We are committed to doing everything in our ability to detect, disrupt, and deter attacks by homegrown violent extremists,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

“As alleged, the defendants in this case carefully studied how to construct an explosive device to launch an attack on the homeland. We remain firm in our resolve to hold accountable anyone who would seek to terrorize the American people, whether by traveling abroad to commit attacks overseas or by plotting here at home.”

Lynch thanked the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the NYPD Intelligence Bureau for helping put together the case.

More than 30 people have been charged with joining terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq or trying to do so in the past 18 months, ABC is reporting.