Queens Duo Pleads Guilty To Building Explosives For Terror Attack

JAMAICA, QUEENS — Two Queens women pleaded guilty Friday to attempting to build explosives for a terrorist attack, federal prosecutors announced.

Jamaica residents Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas discussed their "need to prepare for jihad" with an undercover agent for months before their arrests in 2015, according to the New York Post.

They initially pleaded not guilty.

The duo spent several years researching how to make explosives like the ones used in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack, prosecutors said Friday.

Siddiqui had discussed her interest in committing a terrorist attack in written submissions to a jihadist magazine edited by a now-deceased member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to prosecutors.

The women allegedly wanted to target law enforcement and military-related groups in an attack, prosecutors said.

"In an effort to implement their violent, radical ideology, the defendants studied some of the most deadly terrorist attacks in U.S. history, and used them as a blueprint for their own plans to kill American law enforcement and military personnel," Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Law enforcement officers seized propane gas tanks, soldering tools, car bomb instructions, jihadist literature, machetes and several knives from the women's homes, according to prosecutors.

Siddiqui and Velentzas each face up to 20 years in prison.