GMU Student Charged With Plotting Terror Attack on Israel's Consulate

FAIRFAX CITY — An 18-year-old Virginia college student living in Falls Church has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting a mass-casualty attack on the Israeli consulate in New York City, authorities said Friday.

Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, a freshman at George Mason University, is accused of distributing pro-ISIS material and information on weapons of mass destruction online, officials said.

He has been charged with the distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of the commission of a federal crime of violence, according to prosecutors.

Hassan operated "several pro-ISIS and Al Qaeda accounts that promoted violence against Jews," according to court documents.

The 18-year-old also tried to recruit others for a planned attack and shared information about explosives and guns, NBC News reported.

The FBI began investigating Hassan in May, after the Fairfax County Police Department caught wind of Hassan's "radical and terrorist-leaning behavior" on X.

An undercover FBI informant made contact with Hassan, on one of his X accounts in August, and allegedly communicated for several months. He shared he picked the Consulate General of Israel as a target.

The suspect was majoring in information technology, the school disclosed Friday.

"Although the student did not live on campus, he has been barred from entering university property," GMU Vice President Paul Allvin said in a statement. "As criminal proceedings progress, the university will take appropriate action on student code of conduct violations."

The criminal complaint against Hassan was filed on Dec. 16 in Alexandria.

Allvin said Hassan's arrest, which the university learned of on Dec. 17, so far appears to have no connection to an earlier police action involving two George Mason students whose home was searched in November.

Those incidents involved two students accused of a connection to two cases of vandalism on campus earlier in the year. When George Mason police, Fairfax County Police and the FBI raided the off-campus home of those students they found weapons and materials calling for violence against Americans and Jewish people, NBC said.