FBI says Michigan synagogue attack was 'Hezbollah-inspired'

The FBI said on Monday that a vehicle-ramming attack at a Michigan synagogue earlier this month was an act of terrorism “inspired” by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“Based on the evidence gathered to date, we assess this attack to be a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community and the largest Jewish temple in Michigan,” Jennifer Runyan, the FBI special agent in charge for Detroit, told a press briefing.

The FBI previously identified the attacker as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese-born 41-year-old, while media reports said several of his family members in Lebanon had recently been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Ghazali rammed a pickup truck into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, a suburb of Detroit, on March 12. The truck — loaded with fireworks and gasoline — became lodged in a hallway and caught fire.

No one except the attacker — who died by self-inflicted gunshot — was killed in the attack. However, a security guard was injured and several law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.

At the same press conference Monday, Jerome Gorgon, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said Ghazali had “acted under Hezbollah’s direction and control.”

“Terrorist propaganda is designed to activate the so called lone wolf to act on behalf of the terrorist organization, and it makes no legal difference if the current leader of Hezbollah himself, Naim Qassem, called this man and told him to attack Temple Israel, or whether he simply heeded Hezbollah’s call to kill Jews,” Gorgon added.

Ghazali’s brother Ibrahim, as well as Ibrahim’s two children and another brother, Qassem, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on March 5, according to a report in the New York Times.

Runyan said over the days leading up to the attack, Ghazali had researched Jewish cultural, religious, and education centers in the Detroit area while purchasing equipment for the attack.

But Ghazali had been viewing pro-Hezbollah material before his family was killed, Runyan said.

Ghazali sent a video to his sister about 10 minutes before the attack, Runyan said, in which he declared his intent to “kill as many of them as I possibly can.”

She said that there was no indication of conspirators involved in the attack at this stage.

Runyan said Ghazali was not under federal investigation before the attack and was not on a US terror watch list.

The United States added Lebanon-based Hezbollah to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations in 1997.