A 28-year-old man from Mississauga, Ont., serving a 40-year sentence for his part in a foiled terrorist attack has been sentenced to an additional 50 years in prison after he stabbed two correctional officers in the name of ISIS. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy’s two prison sentences will run consecutively following the Dec. 7, 2020, knife attack at U.S. Penitentiary Allenwood in Pennsylvania. According to the DOJ, Bahnasawy made a weapon from part of a steel desk in his cell and stabbed one officer in the head and face. A second officer who attempted to intervene was stabbed in her hand. The first officer had to have his eye removed following the attack. Once Bahnasawy was subdued, officers said they found a note in his sock that read: “This is a terrorist attack for the Islamic State.” The DOJ said that a “pledge of allegiance” to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was also found taped to the inside of a locker door in Bahnasawy’s prison cell. He pleaded guilty in 2025 to multiple counts of assault, assault with intent to commit murder, possession of contraband inside a prison cell, and providing material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization. “Bahnasawy ... savagely attacked corrections officers once again on behalf of ISIS,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement. “Today’s sentence will further ensure that Bahnasawy remains in prison, where he can do much less harm, for a very long time.” Bahnasawy pleaded guilty in 2016 for plotting to carry out a series of orchestrated attacks in New York in support of ISIS that year. He was sentenced two years later. The DOJ previously said that Bahnasawy had used encrypted electronic messaging applications to coordinate with Talha Haroon, a 20-year-old U.S. resident who was living in Pakistan, and Russell Salic, a 38-year-old Philippines citizen and resident, to bomb and shoot heavily populated areas of the city during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “He planned to detonate bombs in Times Square and the New York City subway system, and to shoot civilians at concert venues. Demonstrating his commitment to carry out the attacks, Bahnasawy pinpointed bomb locations on a map of the subway system, and acquired an array of bomb-making materials,” officials said at the time. Bahnasawy had secured a cabin near New York City for building explosive devices and staging the attacks, according to the DOJ. Haroon was set to meet El Bahnasawy in New York for the attack and Salic had wired money from the Philippines to the U.S. to fund the operation. An FBI agent, who was working undercover, was able to infiltrate the group while posing as an ISIS supporter. In May 2016, Bahnasawy was arrested by the FBI with assistance from the RCMP after he travelled from Canada to New York City to carry out the attacks. Haroon was arrested in Pakistan in September 2016, and Salic was arrested in the Philippines in April 2017. El Bahnasawy’s lawyer appealed his conviction in 2019, arguing that the trial judge violated his rights and that the sentence was unreasonably harsh, citing his struggles with mental health. His defence also submitted that the FBI agent encouraged El Bahnasawy to plan the attacks in New York, but prosecutors maintained the plot was well underway before the two connected. The appeal was thrown out.
