Two teens have been accused of throwing an improvised explosive device at Gracie Mansion during a violent protest Saturday afternoon, with law enforcement sources close to the case saying the homemade bomb was packed with “Mother of Satan,” a high-speed explosive favored by international terrorists.“Anything can ignite it, heat, friction, impact,” one law enforcement source told the New York Post. “They are cheap, hard to detect but highly unstable.” “It’s a combination of things found in common hardware stores and drugstores.
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“You can get it almost anywhere, and it’s hard to detect,” the source said. “The downside is that it’s very sensitive and unstable. If you drop it or something gets on the mixture, it will explode.”The accused are Ibrahim Kiyomi, 19 years old, and Amir Balat, 18 years old.
Law enforcement sources close to the case told The Washington Post that both had self-radicalized in recent years and traveled to Türkiye and other hot spots for terrorism training.The sources said that Balat spent more than three months in Istanbul last year, while Ibrahim traveled to Istanbul and Saudi Arabia in 2024, and made a trip to Melbourne, Australia in 2019.The sources said that the two men confessed to the police after they were arrested at a demonstration in front of the mayor’s residence that they had also watched ISIS videos and had thrown the bomb at right-wing provocateurs because they felt that the provocateurs had insulted their religion.
The sources said that the package was sports drink bottles filled with triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a substance favored by terrorists and known as the “Mother of Satan.” They said the substance was so volatile that it would not normally require a fuse to explode.The explosive can be made using household ingredients readily available at home improvement stores and pharmacies, making it cheap to produce.“It is designed to maim and kill,” one source told The Post.
“It’s just luck, no one died.”The same type of bomb has been used in major terrorist attacks in France, the UK, Belgium and New Delhi over more than a decade, often with deadly consequences.The device did not explode during the clash between demonstrators supporting right-wing activist Jake Lange and anti-Muslim demonstrators outside Gracie Mansion.The incident occurred during a planned anti-Muslim protest organized by Lange outside Gracie Mansion, leading to a confrontation with counter-protesters that quickly turned violent.Video footage showed several quarrels that led to the arrest of six people, including the two accused of throwing the bomb.One of Lang’s supporters, Ian McGuinness, was accused of pepper-spraying counter-protesters and was charged with assault, reckless endangerment and unlawful possession of a harmful substance, sources said.The explosive device, a sports drink bottle filled with TATP and wrapped in construction tape, was thrown at Lange’s group during one of the confrontations, police and sources said.
