Video Reveals Plans of ISIS Supporter Who Wanted to Blow Up Gay Bars

Oakland resident Amer Alhaggagi had terrifying plans for the Bay Area, but was apprehended by the FBI.

Neal Broverman

Neal Broverman is the Editorial Director, Print of Pride Media, publishers of The Advocate, Out, Out Traveler, and Plus, spending more than 20 years in journalism. He indulges his interest in transportation and urban planning with regular contributions to Los Angeles magazine, and his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He lives in the City of Angels with his husband, children, and their chiweenie.

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Neal Broverman

December 18 2018 9:53 AM EST

December 18 2018 9:54 AM EST

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The defense for aspiring terrorist Amer Alhaggagi is now complicated by a video that shows the Yemeni-born man plotting to use homeless people to bomb public buildings.

The undercover FBI video, obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, shows Alhaggagi in 2016 expressing excitement at the process of killing American civilians.

"The way I'm seeing it is we could get away so easily," the Berkeley High School graduate tells an undercover FBI agent. "Like if you want to plant a bomb and just walk into a place with a bomb, you wouldn't have to do it yourself. There's so many homeless people that would do anything for a dollar. I could tell them to walk into the YMCA and they'll do it and we could detonate it from outside."

The bombs were just a sampling of Alhaggagi's plans, according to the FBI and statements the 23-year-old said himself. Alhaggagi allegedly wanted to kill at least 10,000 people in the area and then flee the country to join the Islamic State -- his plots included selling cocaine with strychnine, planting backpack bombs at UC Berkeley, setting the Oakland hills ablaze, joining the Oakland Police Department and stealing weapons, and bombing gay bars and nightclubs in San Francisco.