Maine 19-year-old will plead guilty in mosque attack plot

BANGOR, Maine — A 19-year-old from Maine who the FBI says constructed do-it-yourself explosives and plotted to attack a mosque in the title of the Islamic State crew will plead guilty to offering subject matter beef up to terrorists.

Xavier Pelkey of Waterville faces a most of 15 years in jail underneath a plea settlement in which a 2d rate will be dropped, in step with court docket paperwork filed Wednesday. The change-of-plea listening to is about for subsequent week in U.S. District Court.

Pelkey’s legal professional didn’t instantly reply to a telephone message in the hunt for touch upon Thursday.

Law enforcement officers mentioned Pelkey used to be in verbal exchange with two juveniles — one in Canada, the opposite in Illinois — about engaging in a mass capturing at a Shiite mosque in the Chicago house and most likely different homes of worship. All 3 alleged plotters believed in an intensive type of Sunni Islam that perspectives the Shiite department of Islam as nonbelievers, officers mentioned.

Pelkey used to be 18 when he used to be arrested final 12 months through FBI brokers who discovered 3 do-it-yourself explosives in his place of abode. The gadgets have been manufactured from fireworks bundled along side staples, pins and thumb tacks to create shrapnel, the FBI mentioned.

Investigators additionally discovered a handwritten file in Pelkey’s bed room that gave the look to be a draft remark in regards to the deliberate mosque attack, claiming it in the title of the Islamic State crew. In the remark, Pelkey claimed allegiance to the extremist Sunni militant crew, and an IS flag used to be painted at the wall of his bed room, investigators mentioned.

Despite their defeat in Syria in March 2019, the militant crew’s sleeper cells nonetheless perform fatal assaults in each Syria and Iraq the place they as soon as declared a “caliphate.”