Brooklyn Bomb Plot
- Arab Bombers Foiled in Park Slope -
97/07/31

First Signs of trouble

Residents of Park Slope Brooklyn were awakened this morning at 4:30 AM to the sound of helicopters and the flash of airial search lights in their bed room windows as a joint task force of the NYPD and FBI raided a terrorist lair in upscale Park Slope Brooklyn. As law enforcement officials raided an apartment above the Family Car Service just off President Street on Fourth Avenue most awakened residents had no idea what all the noise and lights were about. They also had no idea that they had been walking past and living next to Arab Terrorists and the Bombs that they were storing in their apartment across the street from the Brooklyn Landmark Bath House #7!

The Raid

While the residents of Park Slope puzzled over the activity in the area law enforcement agents burst into the apartment and shot 2 men as they were about to hit the detonator buttons on the 5 devices they had made. Police Bomb Squad experts said that one device was powerful enough to kill every one within 100 feet of the device if it had exploded.

Police captured one other Arab in addition to the two who were wounded in the raid. Two of the three men were said to be in this country using Jordanian passports. Information on the nationality of the third man is unknown at this time, but there are rummors that all three are linked to the terrorist group Hammas. The wounded men were taken to Methodist Hospital for treatment. Some reports indicate that the police were tipped off to this group by the room mate of one of the suspects who it is alleged contacted police about the bombs in his apartment.

The Devices

Police bomb experts said the five devices were each powerful enough to kill anyone in a 100 foot radius of the device and they did not have any automatic detonation mechanism. This leads to the belief that these individuals intended to launch a suicide attack of terror!

The Target

At this time Police believe the intended target of these bombs was the Atlantic Avenue LIRR train and NYCTA subway station about 10 blocks from the site of the raid. These very busy stations are located below the famous Williamsburg Bank Building and are the major commuter hub in Brooklyn with almost all subway lines passing through that station.

It is impossible to calculate the toll of death and destruction had these men succeeded in bombing the Railroad and Subway stations during rush hour. At rush hour thousands of Brooklyn and Long Island residents travel through and change trains at the Atlantic Avenue station on their way to work in Manhattan.

Rush Hour

Brooklyn commuters were tied up for hours and the Union street station on the N & R line was shutdown all day as Police and FBI searched nearby train stations for bombs and terrorists. One commuter who found that for a short time there were no trains running to Manhattan at all walked past the Brooklyn On Line Office and complained that he had no idea how he was going to get to work. While the Police kept the F line shutdown as they searched the nearby 9th street station for any signs of explosives the all clear was given at Atlantic Avenue and some trains began to leave Brooklyn through that station moving hot and upset New Yorkers into Manhattan on their morning commute.

As the evening rush hour drew to a close residents of Park Slope that use the Union Street R Line station found they had to walk 10 blocks further from either Atlantic Avenue or 9th Street as the Police still had the station closed.

The Tip of The Iceberg?

A Police officer at the scene told one Brooklyn On Line Staff member that there had been a report that in the past few weeks some foreign nationals had been trying to obtain plutonium in New York and it was feared that had they been able to succeed these devices would have been nuclear in nature.

Copyright 1997 by Brett Wynkoop wynkoop@brooklynonline.com