Gracie Mansion terror plot: Men accused of throwing dud bombs at protesters jailed on federal terrorism charges

Chaos erupted outside of Gracie Mansion on Saturday afternoon as New Yorkers clashed with far-right influencer Jake Lang and his posse, leading to a slew of arrests.

Photo by Dean Moses

A federal judge on Monday ordered the two men who allegedly attempted to detonate homemade bombs at far-right, anti-Muslim protesters outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday to be detained following their first court appearance. 

Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, appeared in Manhattan’s federal court Monday afternoon on a five-count criminal complaint charging the pair with attempting to support ISIS, possessing and using a weapon of mass destruction and transporting explosive devices. Both wore white jumpsuits and had their wrists shackled to their torsos. 

Attorneys for Balat and Kayumi — Mehdi Essmidi of the Law Offices of Mehdi Essmidi and Michael Arthus of Federal Defenders of New York, respectfully — agreed to prosecutors’ request to keep the pair at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center until a preliminary hearing on April 8. Neither made a bail application. 

Balat’s attorney: Bomb suspect didn’t ‘have any idea what he’s doing’

After their appearance, Essmidi told reporters that Balat was a young man who didn’t know what he was doing and had personal problems. There would be “a lot of conversations” with the government about this case, he said.

“I believe he is 18 and doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing,” Essmidi said when asked whether he thought Balat was a terrorist. “There’s a lot to figure out about this young man … he has a lot of complicated stuff going on.”

Essmidi added that Balat’s family were “good, hardworking, innocent people who have no idea how this will go.” He said Balat, who’s in his senior year of high school, is only three classes away from graduating. 

Balat and Kayumi joined in a counter-protest in response to far-right activist and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang’s March 7 protest called Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, which gathered a small crowd of people outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim top leader. 

As the counter-protest, which drew over 100 people, heated up, Balat and Kayumi allegedly hurled two improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, into the crowd of protesters, with one landing feet away from Lang. Tisch said the devices, which looked like football-size jars wrapped in black tape filled with screws, nuts and bolts with fuses the men lit, were real bombs that “could have caused serious injury or death,” particularly since at least one contained TATP (triacetone triperoxide), a dangerous explosive chemical. 

Tisch said it was a stroke of luck that the bombs didn’t go off. Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were not home at the time of the protest, which they knew about ahead of time; they were visiting the New York City Sign Museum in Brooklyn, where they were briefed on the incident.

“We were fortunate that the devices used this weekend did not cause the kind of harm that they were certainly capable of causing, but luck is never a strategy,” Tisch said. “Devices like these have the potential to cause devastating harm, which is why the NYPD does thorough counter-terrorism investigations and treats every incident of this kind with the highest level of urgency and care.”

Police said they found two other suspicious devices a few blocks from Gracie Mansion on Sunday morning, including one located in a parked car belonging to Balat and Kayumi on East End Avenue. The device was determined to be nonfunctional. 

Mamdani said even though he found Lang’s views “abhorrent,” he respected and pledged to defend his right to protest peacefully. 

“Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are,” Mamdani said of Lang’s protest over the weekend. “What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”

Balat and Kayumi’s attorneys requested the pair be held in protective custody, with Essmidi citing their age and documented “hellhole” like conditions in Brooklyn’s federal jail. A decision on that request has not yet been made.