A group of former Boy Scouts stockpiled firearms and explosive devices as they plotted to bomb a rural Muslim community in upstate New York , police said.
At the time the four were arrested they had access to 23 rifles and shotguns, as well as three home-made bombs, Greece police chief Patrick Phelan said after Brian Colaneri, 20, Andrew Crysel, 18 and Vincent Vetromile, 19, were charged with weapons possession and conspiracy, alongside a 16-year-old high school student who cannot be named.
Three of the suspects had been in Boy Scouts together.
“I don't know that there was a specific date. They had a plan in place,” he said of the plot to attack Islamberg, a small enclave, close to the Catskill Mountains in northern New York state.
Chief Phelan also refused to rule out further arrests over the alleged plot.
It was a comment by the teenager in the lunchroom during school at the Odyssey Academy in Greece, a suburb of Rochester, that first triggered a police investigation.
Searches of five locations uncovered evidence relating to the plot. Officers found three improvised explosive devices, wrapped in duct tape and filled with ball bearings and nails, hidden inside the teenager’s house.
A small rural community in Delaware County Islamberg was formed in the 1980s by Pakistani cleric Mubarak Ali Gilani and his followers, who had moved out of New York City.
The settlement is operated by The Muslims of America, an indigenous organisation which runs 21 such communes across North America.
However, the hamlet, home to around 200 people, has become a target due to persistent right-wing conspiracy theories it is a terrorist training camp.
Police, analysts and neighbours have routinely debunked rumours for decades, although this has failed to prevent attempts of violence against the community.
In 2017, Tennessee man Robert Doggart was convicted on federal charges for hatching what authorities described as a plan to burn down the Islamberg mosque in 2015.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for those accused of the latest plot to also face federal charges in addition to the state charges already brought against them.
“Anyone accused of plotting an act of violence targeting a religious minority should face state and federal hate crime and civil rights charges commensurate with the seriousness of their alleged actions,” said Afaf Nasher, the group's executive director for New York in a statement.
Additional reporting by AP
