A 46-year-old Arizona man who was sentenced in the Eastern District of California to six years in prison Nov. 7 after targeting several Christian churches with hoax bomb threats had also been building a real bomb, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs stated in a Nov. 7 press release that an FBI bomb technician seized items that served as parts of an improvised explosive device during a search of a storage unit belonging to Zimnako Salah of Phoenix. Just like the hoax bombs that Salah had left in backpacks in the churches, the real bomb he was building was “capable of fitting in a backpack,” the release states.
U.S. Attorney Eric Grant said in the release, “Salah’s seeming ultimate goal to bomb a Christian church would have resulted in many deaths and injuries if his plan had not been thwarted.”
A Sacramento-based jury convicted him in March “of strapping a backpack around the toilet of a Christian church in Roseville, with the intent to convey a hoax bomb threat and to obstruct the free exercise of religion of the congregants who worshipped there,” according to the release.
The jury designated the offense a hate crime because Salah targeted the church due to the worshippers’ religion, the release states.
The release notes that according to evidence at trial, Salah traveled to four Christian churches in Arizona, California, and Colorado between September and November 2023, planting backpacks at two of the churches to convey a hoax bomb threat. Security intercepted him at the other two churches, the names of which were not specified, before he could plant similar backpacks.
“Thanks to the action of church security, local law enforcement, and the FBI, this defendant was stopped before he had a chance to carry out the crimes he sought to commit,” Grant said in the Nov. 7 release. “Today’s sentence is justified by the history and characteristics of this defendant and serves to protect the public from this defendant. And it affirms that people of all religions should be able to worship freely and exercise their First Amendment rights in this country without fear of violence.”
The release states that a search of Salah’s social media records found “that he had consumed extremist propaganda online. Specifically, those records showed that Salah had searched for videos of ‘Infidels dying,’ and he had watched videos depicting ISIS terrorists murdering people.”
According to the release, Salah also said, “America. We are going to destroy it,” in a cellphone video recorded days before the crimes of conviction.
Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said the Nov. 7 sentencing “sends a clear message: those who target people because of their faith will face the full force of federal law.”
“The Department of Justice will continue to protect the rights of all people of faith to worship and live free from fear,” Dhillon added in the release, “and we will hold accountable anyone who threatens or harms them.”
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