Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, both wore blue prison garb as their attorneys entered the pleas on their behalf to an indictment charging them each with a count of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and teaching how to make such a device. Siddiqui was also charged with lying to FBI agents.
An attorney for Siddiqui said he plans on fighting the charges. Velentzas, donning a hijab, smiled at supporters in the gallery as she was brought into the court. Those supporters declined to speak to reporters.
The women were arrested by FBI agents and NYPD officers last month after a sting operation involving a wired female undercover officer. A search of their Queens homes yielded three gas tanks, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, handwritten notes on the recipes for bomb making and jihadist literature, according to court papers.
Velentzas in particular had been “obsessed” with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and even joked about the explosives, according to recorded conversations detailed in a complaint against the women.
Siddiqui had written jihadist poetry later published in a magazine called “Jihad Recollections” and had been in contact with the editor of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine, but lied to FBI agents about those connections, court documents show.
“These defendants allegedly engaged in sustained efforts to obtain bomb-making instructions and materials, including using instructions provided by al Qaeda’s online magazine,” police Commissioner Bill Bratton said in April.
The women researched and started to assemble parts to make homemade bombs — including the kinds used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and the one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack, according to court documents.
They were arrested after Siddiqui acquired propane tanks and instructions on how to turn them into bombs, a criminal complaint suggests.
Prosecutors asked for two more weeks before the next court appearance, telling a magistrate judge that the case was complex and involved a vast amount of evidence, including recordings. They’re scheduled to next appear before a judge on May 20.
