Islamic State plotted to behead Pamela Geller, Muhammad cartoon contest organizer

The Justice Department shared news Thursday that an Islamic State operative residing in Boston had planned to kill Pamela Geller, the woman who organized a Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas last year.

Junaid Hussain of England, 21, had been in talks with 26-year-old Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, as well as two others, according to court documents released Thursday.

Federal prosecutors said Hussain and Rahim had discussed killing Geller around July 4 in New York, where she resides.

But the group’s plan to behead Geller never came to fruition because Rahim chose to instead target a law enforcement official in June 2015. He was shot and killed in Roslindale, Mass. following an attack on a federal surveillance team.

Hussain was killed two months later in a drone strike of Raqqa, Syria.

Prosecutors have charged the other two accomplices — Nicholas Alexander Rovinski, 25, of Warwick, R.I., and David Wright, 26, or Everett, Mass. — with plotting a terror operation across national boundaries.

Related Content