Motive still unknown.
Via The Daily Beast:
When U.S. authorities allegedly discovered a Bronx man with terror training checking out potential targets in New York, they might have assumed he was inspired by ISIS.
Instead, it seems the city was facing a very unusual terror threat.
Ali Kourani was an alleged sleeper agent recruited by Hezbollah’s external terror arm, the Islamic Jihad Organization, or IJO.
It is claimed that his Hezbollah handler ordered him to surveil facilities belonging to the FBI and Army National Guard in New York City. He took detailed notes on security protocols at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
In interviews with the FBI after being “deactivated” from the terrorist group’s external operations wing, Kourani allegedly told the feds he was recruited because of Hezbollah’s interest in obtaining dual-citizen sleeper agents who could be activated in case of an emergency.
“Kourani believes that he was recruited to join the IJO in light of his education and residence in the United States, and in connection with efforts by the IJO to develop ‘sleepers’ who maintained ostensibly normal lives but could be activated and tasked with conducting IJO operations,” according to the complaint.
Kourani was arrested in June and his case highlights the complexities of dealing with an organization that is simultaneously the most powerful political force in Lebanon, an organized-criminal enterprise, an Iran-backed militia, a social-services provider, and a designated foreign-terrorist group.
Hezbollah has been at war with the United States longer than any other foreign terrorist organization. In the 1980s, its operatives killed more than 250 Americans in attacks on a U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon. Its operatives also attacked a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996. (Hezbollah also carried out attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, killing more than 100 people.)