Photo Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League
Asia Siddiqui’s poem, “Take Me to the Lands Where the Eyes Are Cooled.” She submitted the piece to the magazine, “Jihad Recollections.”
By Forum Staff
A Jamaica woman has been sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for her role in planning to build a bomb for use in a terrorist attack in the United States, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Asia Siddiqui, 35, and her co-defendant, Noelle Velentzas, 31, pleaded guilty last August to a charge of teaching or distributing information pertaining to the making and use of an explosive, destructive device, and weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a planned federal crime of violence.
According to officials, between 2013 and 2015, Siddiqui and Velentzas planned to build a bomb for use in a terrorist attack in the United States. They taught each other chemistry and electrical skills directly related to creating explosives and building detonating devices; conducted research on how to make plastic explosives and build a car bomb; shopped for materials for use in an explosive device; and discussed explosive devices used in past terrorist incidents, including the Boston Marathon bombing, Oklahoma City bombing and 1993 World Trade Center attack. They then researched potential targets for an attack, focusing on law enforcement and military-related targets.
Siddiqui’s long-term interest in violent terrorist-related activities was demonstrated in her written submissions to the radical jihadist magazine, “Jihad Recollections.” In a poem titled “Take Me to the Lands Where the Eyes Are Cooled,” Siddiqui wrote that she “taste[s] the Truth through fists and slit throats,” and that there is “[n]o excuse to sit back and wait—for the skies rain martyrdom.”
At the time of the defendants’ arrests, law enforcement agents searched their residences and seized tools of the trade for terrorists, including propane gas tanks, soldering tools, car bomb instructions, machetes, knives, and jihadist literature. Velentzas is awaiting sentencing.
