DOJ: ISIS-Inspired Canadian Inmate Sentenced to 50 Years for Stabbing Prison Officers
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice announced on October 19 that Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, 28, of Ontario, Canada, was sentenced today to 50 years in federal prison for a 2020 attack on corrections officers inside a federal penitentiary — an attack he carried out while already serving a sentence for an ISIS-directed plot to attack New York City.
According to the Justice Department, on December 7, 2020, El Bahnasawy, an inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, attacked two corrections officers with a weapon fashioned from part of a steel desk in his cell. He stabbed one officer in the head and face and stabbed a second officer in the hand when she responded to assist. The first officer eventually lost his right eye. When El Bahnasawy was restrained, officers found a note in his sock reading, "This is a terrorist attack for the Islamic State," and a pledge of allegiance to ISIS was found taped to the inside of his cell locker door. In June 2025, he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of assault, assault with intent to commit murder, possession of contraband in prison, and providing material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.
In 2016, El Bahnasawy plotted with Talha Haroon and Russell Salic to carry out bombings and shootings in heavily populated areas of New York City during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in the name of ISIS; the plot was disrupted by an undercover FBI investigation. He pleaded guilty in October 2016 and was sentenced in December 2018 to 40 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. The prison attack case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the Justice Department's National Security Division.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 位于宾夕法尼亚州的美国联邦监狱 Allenwood（USP Allenwood）外景。公共领域图片，经 Wikimedia Commons 发布。
