Law enforcement arrested a Jordanian national on July 11 who was living in Orlando, Fla., and the 43-year-old has been charged with four counts of bomb threats and a count of destroying an energy facility, the U.S. Justice Department stated on Thursday.
At his detention hearing on Wednesday, Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen was ordered detained, pending a trial, the department said. He faces up to 60 years in prison—40 for the four bomb threats and 20 for the other charge.
“We allege that the defendant threatened to carry out hate-fueled mass violence in our country, motivated in part by a desire to target businesses for their perceived support of Israel,” stated Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general. “Such acts and threats of violence, whether they are targeting the places that Americans frequent every day or our country’s critical infrastructure, are extremely dangerous and will not be tolerated by the Justice Department.”
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, stated that Hnaihen is accused of attacking the power facility and local business and causing “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of damage, “under the guise of expressing his beliefs.”
The department alleges that Hnaihen attacked Orlando businesses “for their perceived support for Israel” in or around June 2024.
“Wearing a mask, under the cover of night, Hnaihen smashed the glass front doors of businesses and left behind ‘warning letters,’” according to the Justice Department. “In his letters, which were addressed to the U.S. government, Hnaihen laid out a series of political demands, culminating in a threat to ‘destroy or explode everything here in whole America. Especially the companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel.’”
At the end of June, Hnaihen was accused of breaking into a solar-power generation facility in Wedgefield, Fla., where he “spent hours systematically destroying solar panel arrays,” per the department. “He smashed panels, cut wires and targeted critical electronic equipment” and left “two more copies of his threatening demand letter.”
“Hnaihen is believed to have caused more than $700,000 in damage,” the Justice Department said.
He also allegedly left a “warning letter,” in which he threatened to “destroy or explode everything,” at an Orlando industrial propane gas distribution center.