MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Milwaukee man wanted to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people in an attack he hoped would show “nobody can play with Muslims” and spark more mass shootings in the United States, federal agents said Tuesday after the man’s arrest.
Federal prosecutors charged 23-year-old Samy Mohamed Hamzeh on Tuesday with unlawfully possessing a machine gun and receiving and possessing firearms not registered to him. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney, Dean Puschnig, didn’t immediately respond to a question asking why charges were limited to gun possession. Hamzeh’s attorney, federal defender Ronnie Murray, didn’t immediately return email and voicemail messages left after business hours.
According to an FBI affidavit, agents were tipped off in September that Hamzeh planned to travel to Israel in October to attack Israeli soldiers and citizens in the West Bank. He abandoned those plans due to “family, financial and logistic reasons,” the affidavit said, but refocused his efforts on a domestic attack.
Hamzeh discussed his plans extensively with two FBI informants. The affidavit said the FBI started recording his conversations with the informants in October.
Hamzeh and the two informants traveled to a gun range on Jan. 19 and practiced with a pistol. Afterward they took a tour of a Masonic temple in Milwaukee. The affidavit does not name the temple and Puschnig declined to identify it.
Masons are members of a fraternal organization that carries out a variety of activities including charity work. Wisconsin has nearly 11,000 Masons in 180 lodges, according to Frank Struble, grand master of Free and Accepted Masons in Wisconsin. The organization is not a religion.
Struble said the allegations were “hard to hear.” He said he knew which Masonic center had been targeted but declined to identify it.
“Masons are a part of an organization that helped build this country,” Struble said. “I can understand from that standpoint where someone who is against this country would target us.”
The owner of a downtown Milwaukee gym said she recently fired Hamzeh after hiring him as a trainer just a few weeks ago.
Delia Luna of 9Round Kickbox Fitness described Hamzeh as “very intense, very militant” as a trainer and said he didn’t fit the atmosphere she wanted to create.
“He didn’t mix well,” Luna said.
Federal agents said that on Jan. 19 and into the early morning of Jan. 20, Hamzeh discussed his plans to attack the temple with the informants, telling them they needed two more machine guns – the group apparently already had one – and silencers. They planned to station one person at the temple’s entrance while the other two went through the building, killing everyone they saw. They then planned to walk away from the scene as if nothing had happened.
“I am telling you, if this hit is executed, it will be known all over the world … all the Mujahedeen will be talking and they will be proud of us,” Hamzeh said, according to the affidavit. “Such operations will increase in America, when they hear about it. The people will be scared and the operations will increase. … This way we will be igniting it. I mean we are marching at the front of the war.”
Hamzeh added that he hoped to kill 30 people, “because these 30 will terrify the world. The (expletive) will know that nobody can play with Muslims.”
He added, “We are here defending Islam, young people together join to defend Islam, that’s it, that is what our intention is.”
According to the affidavit, Hamzeh met with two undercover FBI agents on Monday. They presented him with two automatic machine guns and a silencer. He paid for the weapons and silencer in cash and put them in the trunk of his car. The agents then arrested him and recovered the guns and silencer.
Hamzeh’s arrest marks the Milwaukee area’s second brush with a mass shooting in less than four years. A white supremacist named Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb, in 2012. Page shot himself in the head after a police officer wounded him.
Last month Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. They later died in a shootout with police.
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Richmond reported from Madison, Wisconsin.
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.
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Hasn’t PinocchiObama been trying to con us into thinking Islam is a religion of peace and we should embrace them in our country? 🙁 🙁 🙁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vzMNG2fZc&feature=youtu.be
Trump isn’t looking so stupid or bigoted now, is he?
But yet there are Still those out there who say its being ‘racist’ of us to not want to allow more of these savages into our country..
sadly these murderous thugs are amongst us like fleas on a dog.
and they have more rights the we do.
its comming are you ready?
I quite agree that “playing with mudslimes should stop. They should be treated as the Romans dd the Carthaginians. EIEI&O!!
OK, libtards, how many more members of the “religion of peace” do you intend to inflict on the country? It has been said a gazillion times that islam is not compatible with western civilization and the proof just keeps mounting. Islam is not just a “religion” as westerners would describe it, it is also a political belief bent on world domination, the only “peace’ there will be is when they have eliminated ALL non muslims.
When they don’t have non muslims to kill they kill their own. This has happened over and over throughout history.
They intend to inflict as many of them as they can.. IMO in a vein attempt to push us to call for more gun restrictions.
Put him on a military plane, fly over iran and throw him out. Justice given to devils. He is another useless waster of oxygen.
Why fly him anywhere? I am sure they can locate a few wild boar sanctuaries who would be happy to feed this ‘thing’ to their boars!
This technique by the FBI is not unique to this case nor targeting any particular religion, race, or region. It is used to remove people that have an ambition to have a machine gun without the proper licenses and those that seek to have an untraced gun.
It is a “first offense” tactic and is pretty cut-n-dry in prosecution. A “I was framed” defense does not hold. The buyer knows what they are doing is illegal and carries very heavy penalties. If they complete the transaction, they have taken the crime full term.
It is not difficult to obtain a license and to own and operate a machine gun legally. Yes, the government knows who has a license and who has a machine gun.
If you are licensed and buy an unregistered gun or buy from someone who is not licensed, you are in equally deep trouble. (The FBI will try this on license dealers to remove people that may “fence” weapons.)
It is not necessary to file additional charges to put the person away. In fact, the absence of additional charges makes fewer opportunities for the defense attorneys to “introduce doubt”.
This guy had additional infractions, they will simply be noted and kept in “his file”. They will surface with his parole hearings.
Good job – FBI
So where did this Muslim maniac come from? What do you want to bet that Samy Mohamed has been on welfare getting EBT, free housing and free health care. He appears to have no visible means of support?
What’s the betting he is from that peaceful place, Syria..
The religion of peace plans another display of their tolerance and loving attitude. This is all by design folks, watch your six.
This article from the Associated Press is poorly written, since it does not care to mention the background of this terrorist.
Of course its poorly written. It was wrote by that most liberal of news sites the AP
Just a couple of thoughts here . . . okay, three, and I’m doing my best not to let this be some emotional outburst.
First, this is another example of how worthless gun control is. We’ve seen it in California, we’ve seen it in New York, Europe, Australia and Mexico. Draconian gun laws do not prevent scum from getting guns. All they do is disarm honest citizens. This guy had an illegal machine gun, and they are not all that easy to get. Liberals need to educate themselves about the difference between a semi-automatic sporting rifle and an actual machine gun.
Second, never . . . NEVER trust anyone with the word Mohammad in his name.
Third, having spent many years working security in the Middle East, very few Muslims are trustworthy. They are fine one-on-one, but get them into the mosque and get the crowd thing going, and you need to watch your back.
Obama and the Liberals want to let Muslims into the USA in unprecedented numbers. There can be only one motivation for that. I’ll let you all figure out what that might be,
I too have experience with them in the middle east. They are squad assassins, PERIOD!
@wwskydvr
I’d love to hear where you’ve been. I’ve been to Iraq, Afghanistan, the West Bank, Pakistan, Egypt, and Beruit. And it’s always been the same.
Most of my travel was years ago, before all the hoopla took place. I was mostly in North Africa, but did spend time in other areas; Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and time in Iran before the Shah left. Hasn’t changed much that I can see.
I spent 2 yrs in Bahrain and 10 months in Iraq (with 3 weeks in Kuwait)
This is a re-run of a movie we have all seen before. America hating muslim wants to kill Americans and expand Islam’s caliphet.
Our Muslim-In-Chief by design continues to advance the take over of America by Islam slowly but methodicaly.
The question is: What are we going do about it other than just talk.
Do we want another European style muslim invasion of America?
We all know or should know how Islam works by now and if not read the Quran and the Hadith.
There are right now over 1,200 mosques in America from Coast to Coast and according to reports a mosque in Hamtramk, Michigan muslim prayers were heard over loud speakers outside!
Let your state representative know how strong is the muslim influence in your state and to put a stop immediatedly to all immigration until further notice.
●Call for Obama’s impeachment immediatedly.
● I have posted this before but it is worth repeating.
One of the reasons the Roman Empire fell was that they allowed
massive migration from neighboring contries and eventualy it choked the Roman Empire financialy.