A man accused of attacking police with a machete near New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve is now facing federal terrorism charges
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Trevor Thomas Bickford was charged with federal crimes in connection with his self-avowed jidad against U.S. government officials and his knife attack on three police officers in Times Square.
Bickford, 19, of Wells, Maine, began studying radical Islamic ideology last summer, authorities said. A criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court said Bickford told a family member in late November or early December that he wanted to go to Jordan or Afghanistan to be a suicide bomber for his religion, and he told an older brother, a soldier in the U.S. military, in text messages in mid-December that he wanted to go to Afghanistan to join the Taliban.
The FBI began investigating Bickford in mid-December based in part on concerns that members of his family expressed about Bickford's behavior, the complaint said. According to the complaint, Bickford ultimately scrapped his November plans to travel overseas and instead decided he'd wage jihad against the U.S. government within the United States as part of his plan to “wage jihad against officials of governments that he believes are anti-Muslim, including the U.S. Government."
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