Kamal Ghorui
One of the accused in the case involving explosive devices thrown near Gracie Mansion flashed a salute honouring ISIS as he was led in shackles from a police precinct on Monday.Emir Balat, 18, was seen holding up his right index finger and grinning at the press while being led by a police officer and an FBI agent. Balat, wearing a black T-shirt and beige pants, made the gesture before one of the officers flanking him slapped down his hand.Balat was arrested on Saturday along with 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi after a homemade “Mother of Satan” bomb was thrown at protesters outside New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Upper East Side residence.NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed that Saturday’s incident was being treated as an attempted ISIS-inspired terror attack. The pair was expected to face federal charges on Monday.Balat is accused of lighting and dropping a “Mother of Satan” improvised homemade explosive near the police on Saturday at around 12:30 p.m., according to police and sources. Police said the device consisted of a sports drink bottle filled with volatile explosive material TATP, set inside a glass jar surrounded by nuts and bolts, and could have been fatal if it had detonated.Law enforcement sources told The Post that Balat used the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) after his police interview.Balat, a student in the Neshaminy School District in Pennsylvania, was allegedly recorded on a police body camera after his arrest saying that when someone insults the name of the prophet Muhammad, “We take action,” a law enforcement source said.When asked during his police interview why he carried out the failed attack, Kayumi allegedly said he had done it for ISIS, according to the sources.The two teenagers reportedly made pro-ISIS statements while in police custody and admitted to watching Islamist terror propaganda videos, federal law enforcement sources told Fox News correspondent CB Cotton.Balat, whose parents are reportedly from Turkey but who became naturalised citizens in 2017, reportedly grew up in a four-bed two-bath home in the Pennsylvania suburb of Langhorne, worth an estimated $653,000, while his alleged sidekick lived in a $2.25 million six-bedroom home near the New Jersey border.Agents were seen raiding Balat’s home following his arrest, as a “terror investigation” was reportedly underway.
