Two Pennsylvania Men Plead Not Guilty in NYC Bombing Plot Case

Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, both from Pennsylvania, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to terrorism charges tied to a March 7 confrontation outside Gracie Mansion, the New York City mayor’s residence. The case, now before U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, began as a protest clash and escalated into a federal terrorism prosecution.

Prosecutors say the defendants were part of a volatile scene outside Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side, where an anti-Islam demonstration and a counterprotest drew more than 100 people. The event unfolded amid chants and political confrontation, and investigators say the two men brought homemade explosives into the crowd. No one was injured and none of the devices detonated, but authorities said at least one contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a highly unstable homemade explosive.

The charges go well beyond possession. Federal prosecutors have accused Balat and Kayumi of attempted support for ISIS, use of a weapon of mass destruction and transportation of explosive materials. They pursued the terrorism counts, investigators said, because the evidence suggested a deliberate attempt to turn a political and ideological clash into mass-casualty violence. Among the evidence prosecutors have described are a notebook with detailed attack plans, bomb-making materials in a storage unit and recordings from the suspects’ car.

Those recordings, investigators said, captured the men allegedly discussing killing as many as 60 people and wanting to “start terror.” Authorities also said one suspect appeared to hope for something “even bigger” than the Boston Marathon bombing, language prosecutors say supports the claim that the plot was inspired by ISIS rather than a spontaneous outburst.

A third suspicious device was found the next day in a car about three blocks from Gracie Mansion, underscoring how close the alleged plot came to a city neighborhood already used to heavy security and political protest. The episode has also drawn attention because the defendants are teenagers from Pennsylvania, and because the alleged target was not an abstract symbol but the home of New York City’s mayor.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the suspects should be held fully accountable and that New Yorkers would not tolerate terrorism or violence in the city. For prosecutors, the case now rests on whether the evidence can prove that the men crossed the line from protest disruption into an organized, ideologically driven bomb plot aimed at civilians and an elected official’s doorstep.