Two Bucks County Men Charged in ISIS-Inspired Bomb Plot Near Gracie Mansion

Dashcam audio captured Emir Balat telling his alleged co-conspirator that the homemade bombs he had built were "going to kill about 8 to 16 people," or as many as 60 if the crowd outside Gracie Mansion was large enough. When authorities arrested Ibrahim Kayumi shortly after, a bystander asked why he had done it. He answered with one word: "ISIS."

Federal prosecutors charged both men with five counts following the March 7, 2026, attack near Mayor Zohran Mamdani's official residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Balat, 18, is a 12th-grade student at Neshaminy School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Kayumi, 19, is also from Bucks County. Both are being held without bail.

The indictment, brought by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, includes attempted material support to ISIS, use of a weapon of mass destruction, transportation of explosive materials, interstate receipt of explosives, and unlawful possession of destructive devices. The weapons of mass destruction charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The devices were sports drink bottles packed with explosive material, placed inside glass jars wrapped in black tape, studded with nuts and bolts, and fused to consumer fireworks. Law enforcement confirmed one contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a volatile compound the indictment dubbed the "Mother of Satan" and one the FBI linked to multiple terrorist attacks over the past decade. One device was ignited but failed to explode. A third suspicious device was later recovered from a parked car roughly three blocks from Gracie Mansion.

Evidence pointed to at least a week of planning. Video showed Balat purchasing a 20-foot consumer fireworks safety fuse for under $7 at a Phantom Fireworks store in Penndel, Pennsylvania on March 2, five days before the attack. FBI agents executing a search warrant on a storage unit in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, found a notebook detailing the plot and alternative targets, along with explosive residue requiring controlled detonations on site.

The attack came during dueling protests outside Gracie Mansion during Ramadan. Jake Lang, a far-right influencer freed from January 6 charges by a Trump clemency order that included allegations of assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, organized an anti-Islam rally that drew approximately 20 participants. A counterprotest drew 125 at its peak. Balat and Kayumi came from the counterprotest side.

Balat told investigators he had aimed for an attack bigger than the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, explicitly noting it had resulted in "only three deaths." En route to the NYPD precinct, he declared: "This isn't a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet … We take action! We take action!" Kayumi, at the precinct, confirmed he had watched ISIS propaganda on his phone.

Mayor Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, a dual citizen of Uganda and the United States naturalized in 2018, was not home with his wife, Rama Duwaji, when the devices were placed. He called the charges against Balat and Kayumi a "heinous act of terrorism" and condemned Lang's original demonstration as "vile" and "rooted in white supremacy" while maintaining it had a legal right to proceed.

Neither suspect had a prior criminal record. The FBI and NYPD said the plot bore no connection to ongoing military action in Iran; investigators remained focused on the suspects' digital activity to determine whether they were directly recruited by ISIS or radicalized independently. The absence of counterterrorism assets, including bomb-sniffing dogs, at the publicly announced event drew pointed questions about NYPD threat assessment protocols for high-profile public gatherings.