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Two anti-Semitic “lone wolves” planned to dress up as Hasidic Jews and slaughter worshipers at city synagogues – after selling guns and drugs to finance the diabolical plot, cops said.
Details of the mission were revealed Thursday after the Queens duo – whom neighbors called knuckleheads – were charged with terrorism and hate crimes.
Cops say the ringleader, Algerian-born Ahmed Ferhani, 27, who sought asylum here with his family in 1999, also fantasized about blowing up the Empire State Building and a Queens church.
Ferhani enlisted a Moroccan pal, Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, in a plan to sneak into “a major synagogue in Manhattan” disguised in Orthodox-style beards and side curls to plant a bomb.
“He was committed to violent jihad, and his plan became bigger and more violent with each passing week,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. said.
Neighbors wondered if the men were serious – or capable of causing such mayhem.
“There’s no way they could be terrorists. They are too stupid,” said a neighbor of Ferhani in Whitestone. “Him and his brother are always out in the street smoking pot and fighting.”
At synagogues, word of the plot was chilling.
“It’s scary, it’s mind-boggling and we need to be on alert,” said Rabbi Chezky Wolff of the Chelsea Shul on W. 23rd St.
No specific synagogue was targeted and the plot was still in its early planning stages, Mayor Bloomberg said.
“Fortunately . . . New York City police officers were watching them and were in position to take them into custody before they could maim and murder innocent New Yorkers,” he said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Ferhani, a former cosmetics salesman at Saks Fifth Avenue, had discussed avenging the treatment of Muslims.
“He was fed up with the way Muslims were being treated around the world,” said Kelly, quoting Ferhani telling an undercover cop, “They’re treating us like dogs.”
Ferhani and Mamdouh were nailed in a sting operation after being caught on wiretaps discussing the plot – hatched months ago before the death of Osama Bin Laden.
They made arrangements with an undercover NYPD cop – a foreign-born officer trained outside the Police Academy – to pay $700 for two Browning .380 semiautomatic pistols, a 9-mm. Smith & Wesson handgun, a grenade and ammo.
Ferhani told the undercover he planned to sell two of the guns to fund his synagogue bombing plot, Kelly said. He also planned to sell heroin, a source said.
“Just before Ferhani was apprehended, he said he wanted to obtain more handguns, silencers, a box of hand grenades, bullet-resistant vests and a police radio,” Kelly said.
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