Federal authorities announced Dec. 15 that the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) disrupted a coordinated terrorist plot to detonate improvised explosive devices at multiple locations in the Los Angeles area on New Year’s Eve.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that his agency arrested four individuals connected to the plot over the weekend. He said the individuals are “self-identified members of a radical offshoot of the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), an extremist group motivated by pro-Palestinian, anti-law-enforcement, and anti-government ideology.”
Patel said the suspects were allegedly planning coordinated bombing attacks at five separate sites across Los Angeles.
A fifth individual believed to be linked to the group was later arrested in New Orleans and was allegedly planning a separate attack, Patel said.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, said during a Dec. 15 press conference that the Los Angeles arrests were made Dec. 12. He identified the suspects as Audrey I. Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. Each is charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device.
“The charges we are announcing today stem from the defendants and their co-conspirators’ detailed, coordinated plot to bomb multiple U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve,” Essayli said.
Reuters reported that the TILF “LA Chapter” describes itself on social media as devoted to “Liberation through decolonization and tribal sovereignty.” Essayli said investigators searching Carroll’s residence found TILF-linked posters bearing slogans including “Death to America,” “Long live Turtle Island and Palestine,” and “Death to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
A federal criminal complaint filed Dec. 13 alleges the four suspects drafted a written attack plan, shared bomb-making instructions, and conducted pre-operational surveillance of their targets. The filing says three of the four Los Angeles suspects brought potassium nitrate, PVC pipes, charcoal, sulfur powder, and other bomb-making materials to a campsite in the Mojave Desert to test explosive devices.
According to the complaint, FBI agents intervened before the suspects completed assembling a functional explosive device.
The filing also alleges that a suspect provided a confidential source with a “handwritten document titled ‘OPERATION MIDNIGHT SUN’ that described a bombing plot.”
“Specifically, the plan contemplated planting backpacks with ‘ieds,’ or Improvised Explosive Devices, to be simultaneously detonated at five locations targeting two U.S. companies at midnight on New Year’s Eve 2025 in the Central District of California,” the filing said.
The targeted companies “are used or engaged in activities affecting interstate and foreign commerce,” according to the filing.
Essayli said the suspects also discussed targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs in January or February. He added that prosecutors expect to file additional charges in the coming weeks as investigators continue reviewing the evidence.
The post FBI thwarts New Year’s Eve bomb plot in Los Angeles, officials say appeared first on CatholicVote org.