NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (WLS) — A previous Navy sailor who confessed to planning attacks on the Naval Station Great Lakes and downtown Chicago has been handed a 12-year prison sentence, according to information obtained by the ABC7 I-Team.
Xuanyu Harry Pang, 38, of North Chicago, is said to have surveilled the base as part of a terror plot. His plan was stopped in 2022 by the FBI.
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Pang admitted guilt earlier this year in a federal court to conspiring and attempting to deliberately harm and sabotage national defense assets, locations, and utilities, with the aim of harming, obstructing, and hindering the United States’ national defense, as per the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
Pang, who became a naturalized citizen originally from China, purportedly monitored Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago as a new recruit, along with Michigan Avenue and various train stations in the Chicago area as part of a terrorist scheme.
Possible disaster at Naval Station Great Lakes, along with the intended attacks on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, were prevented by the FBI in 2022 upon Pang’s arrest.
Court documents reveal that Pang, alongside another undisclosed individual in Colombia referred to solely as “Individual A”, encountered a confidential FBI informant in 2022 who alleged affiliation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”) Quds Force.
The informant advised Pang that he aimed to execute a terrorist strike in the Chicago area as a reprisal for the death of Qasem Soleimani, an IRGC Quds Force commander, who was killed by U.S. military forces in 2020.
Eventually, the source connected Pang with a covert FBI employee who was posing as an affiliate of the Quds Force.
READ MORE | Ex-Navy sailor pleads guilty in alleged plot to attack Great Lakes Naval Station, downtown Chicago
Pang, the unnamed “Individual A” and the covert FBI employee all communicated through encrypted messages about possible targets for the attack while Pang was stationed at the Naval Station Great Lakes, court records show.
Pang personally met with the undercover FBI employee three times in the fall of 2022, with Pang showing the employee photos and videos on his phone from inside the Naval Station, as well as along Michigan Avenue at one of the meetings, as possible places to attack.
Pang was recorded during one of those meetings showing the FBI agent images of Michigan Avenue and saying, “You guys are looking for max damage, right?”
Court documents show Pang planned to obtain radioactive polonium and provided a cell phone he believed could be used as a detonator in what may have been a plan to create a dirty bomb.
Pang also obtained military uniforms for potential attackers to use to get onto the Great Lakes Naval Station base, investigators said.
In one recorded exchange through an encrypted messaging app that was included in the charging documents, Pang requested to be paid in Bitcoin because, “It is simply not safe for me or you to be carrying that much cash around. This is Chicago, people gets (sic) robbed every day.”
Pang also said he would travel to Wisconsin to buy automatic weapons.
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