Massacre Threat Received By Manhattan Mosque, Police Say

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — A letter sent to a Manhattan mosque has threatened a massacre "on a scale never seen before," police said

The Masjid Manhattan, located at 30 Cliff St. in Lower Manhattan, received the letter Wednesday and alerted police. It was mailed in London and read: "We will be coming to your mosque in August to carry out a massacre. It will be on a scale never seen before."

The NYPD launched an immediate investigation. An NYPD spokesman was not immediately able to say if extra security had been added at the mosque.

The threat was first reported by the New York Daily News. The letter was addressed to a 40-year-old official at the mosque who opened it about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, police said. A harassment complaint has been filed with the NYPD.

A representative for the mosque did not immediately want to comment on the threats.

On Monday, a 47-year-old man drove his van into a crowd of Muslims in London, killing one man and injuring 11 more. Darren Osborne, the man arrested in connection with the attack, shouted "I want to kill all Muslims" as he plowed the van into the crowd of worshippers, according to witnesses. Osborne has been arrested on terrorism charges. There is no immediate indication that Wednesday's threat against the Manhattan mosque is connected to the London attack.

A group of local politicians who represent Lower Manhattan condemned the attack in a joint statement on Thursday afternoon. State Senator Daniel Squadron, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou, and Council Member Margaret Chin spoke out against the threat.

"Threatening a massacre at a house of worship is fundamentally an attack on the values and core principles of our nation, our city, and our borough," they said in the statement. "A political climate that fosters hatred and fear continues to have very real consequences in our neighborhoods. We stand united with the Muslim community and all New Yorkers in denouncing this threat, and the hateful rhetoric that creates this climate."

Masjid Manhattan, which was founded in 1970, originally operated out of a location on Warren Street before moving to its Cliff Street location in 2010. The mosque has long been a pillar of Manhattan's Muslim community.

The number of anti-Muslim assaults sharply increased in 2015, the latest year for which FBI data is available. A Pew Research Center analysis of the data found that assaults against Muslims in 2015 reached their highest levels since 2001. A later report from the Muslim civil rights organization Council on American-Islamic Relation indicates that the troubling trend continued in 2016; CAIR's study concluded that found that reports of anti-Muslim incidents increased 57 percent in 2016, compared to the previous year.

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Initial reports and data indicate that hate crimes and bias incidents against multiple minority communities, including Muslims, have increased in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The NYPD says that reports of hate crimes, particularly anti-Semitic incidents, have increased notably so far this year.

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