A fifth suspected member of a reported Islamic terror cell in New Jersey has been arrested.
As Independence Day approaches, the terror warnings increase and reports are surfacing that ISIS seems to be in a last-minute push to radicalize a few more members.
One such recruit – Alaa Saadeh – was arrested on Monday. He is suspected of being part of a plot to blow up a pressure cooker bomb at a prominent New York land mark.
Saadeh is being charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization and witness tampering.
Saadeh had cased at least one target, the George Washington Bridge, with plans to detonate a pressure cooker bomb similar to the one used in the Boston Marathon attack.
Samuel Topaz and Munther Omar Saleh were arrested earlier this month in the New York/New Jersey area and five total terrorism-related arrests have been made in the last few weeks in that same area.
The sudden swath of arrests comes as U.S. law enforcement ramps up in response to increased Islamic terror warnings.
ISIS social media activity has greatly increased ahead of the fourth and in concert with a Muslim holy month.
ISIS has directed all able Muslims to “murder the enemy” during the holy month of Ramadan. Brutal attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait last week were attributed to the Islamic terrorism directive and many more such lone wolf attacks are expected.
Global support for ISIS may be much bigger than previously known, according to a new report that found as many as 42 million Muslims around the world have positive feelings about the black-clad army of barbarians that established a so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq last year.
“To have this number of people with this level of sophistication acting in such a close geographic area in such a compressed period of time – we have to, I think, assume the worst” said U.S. Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.). “I would say that this is the most serious level of threat that I’ve seen since September 11th [2001],” King added.
