DEARBORN, Mich. – An attorney representing one of the suspects arrested Friday in connection to an alleged potential terrorist attack is challenging FBI Director Kash Patel’s claims that federal agents thwarted a possible terror plot.
Dearborn attorney Amir Makled said his client, a 20-year-old from Dearborn, is still in federal custody despite still having no charges filed against him as of Sunday evening.
Although federal authorities say the arrests are connected to a potential plan to carry out an attack over Halloween weekend, Mackled said he’s found no evidence that any steps to carry out an attack were ever taken.
“Through my investigation, I’ve come to find out that there was never a planned attack,” Makled said. “These individuals that were investigated, were teenage boys, they range from ages 16 to 20, are not part of a terrorist cell.”
Makled said of the five suspects taken into custody, three including his client are still in custody and two others were questioned and released.
“There’s nothing in his communications, there’s nothing in his chats, there’s nothing in his telephone, there’s nothing that’s going to show in electronic forensic searches in his devices that’s going to show that this is a guy that wanted to cause harm to others,” Makled said.
Makled described the alleged suspects as gamers, who legally own firearms and go to gun ranges recreationally. Makled estimated they own three to four firearms between all five of them and said previous reports that they had access to firearm training are untrue.
“They go to the range, and they shoot their registered and legally owned firearms, which is all legal,” Makled said. “So is this some kind of racial profiling? We don’t know.”
Makled said previous reports that the suspects were naturalized citizens from a Middle Eastern country are also false and that they were all born and raised in the metro Detroit area.
Makled also said there is no evidence to suggest they have any connection to ISIS extremism.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X early Friday morning, announcing the arrests and writing that more details would be forthcoming.
“We’ve heard nothing from the government since Friday,” Makled said. “We had the initial tweet from Director Patel, and then not a press conference, not a statement from the U.S Attorney’s Office, nothing from local FBI agents, so to me, that’s a tell-tale sign that they’ve come up with nothing. There was no attack.”
Makled said the suspects’ families have been “devastated” by the arrests. He described Patel’s claims that federal agents thwarted a potential act of terror as “baffling” and unwarranted.
“This community is always under a suspicious look from the outsiders,” Makled said. “It’s unfortunate that anytime there’s an event that happens, and people say that it’s something that has to do with Dearborn, there’s a second glance, oh perhaps there’s something nefarious happening. But there’s nothing here. These are normal kids.”
A spokesperson for the FBI Detroit Field Office declined to comment on Makled’s claims. A spokesperson for the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.