EXCLUSIVE TO FOX: In New Jersey, a 19-year-old is facing accusations of plotting to join the remnants of ISIS following a foiled terror attack targeting gay bars in Michigan. The suspect, who posed with an ISIS flag, and another individual in jihadi attire, were caught in photos intercepted by federal agents. These images were taken from a group chat where the alleged conspirators humorously acknowledged being under FBI surveillance.
Both individuals had already attracted the attention of federal authorities.
Tomas Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, from Montclair, reportedly offered to perform ISIS-style executions on camera during a video call with supposed accomplices and aspired to be featured in a documentary and on Wikipedia for his actions. The FBI had previously interviewed him in 2024 after he allegedly anticipated a “newsworthy” terror incident in Boston.
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, representing New Jersey, named another suspect as Saed Ali Mirreh, a 19-year-old from Kent, Washington. Mirreh is charged with conspiring to support a designated foreign terrorist organization. Prior investigations in 2023 and 2024 linked him to a juvenile terror suspect in Canada and discussions about other ISIS attacks, according to federal documents.
Investigators intercepted an image purportedly showing Tomas Jimenez-Guzel with a knife in front of an ISIS flag, using what is alleged to be an ISIS hand gesture. Before sharing the image, Jimenez-Guzel allegedly obscured his face.
“The threat of terrorism remains significant,” Habba remarked in a video posted on X on Wednesday. She connected these suspects to three individuals arrested in suburban Detroit, who were allegedly planning Halloween attacks and found with a cache of high-end firearms and ammunition.
Mirreh was the alleged “finance guy” accused of raising thousands of dollars to fund travel to Syria with the help of an online scammer identified only as “Bob,” whom court documents placed in Sweden.
She added that the two men allegedly planned to travel from Turkey to Syria and fight for ISIS.
Authorities arrested Mirreh at his Washington home just hours before he was scheduled to fly from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Istanbul, Turkey, according to a federal criminal complaint. Jimenez-Guzel was taken into custody at Newark Liberty International Airport after moving up his flight from Nov. 17 to Nov. 5.
Federal investigators intercepted this photo that they allege shows Tomas Jimenez-Guzel wearing a keffiyeh on his head and holding a handgun. He allegedly blurred his own face before sending the image. (Justice Department)
Federal authorities also arrested Montclair resident Milo Sedarat, the 21-year-old son of an Iranian expat poet who teaches college English in New York City. Agents in tactical gear and armored vehicles were seen outside his father’s house on Tuesday.
The suspects appeared to be aware that their encrypted conversations might be monitored by the FBI, joking about it in text exchanges and sending selfies with their own faces blurred, court documents allege.
“Everyone has to be prepared to ‘unalive’ someone,” Mirreh is alleged to have said at one point, using a stand-in phrase that social media users commonly insert instead of the word “kill” to get around content filters.
Federal investigators intercepted this photo that they allege shows Saed Mirreh in ISIS-style garb. He allegedly blurred his own face before sending the image. (Justice Department)
In one exchange, Jimenez-Guzel allegedly proposed coming up with a fake plot to mislead authorities. In another, after the arrests of a group of suspected co-conspirators from Dearborn, Michigan, he allegedly told the group in a conference call, “There’s a lot of urgent stuff we need to speak about.”
“Five of us are in the article and the feds… they’re gonna be looking for us soon,” he allegedly said. “If we don’t leave, we are cooked.”
VIDEO: Suspect’s father at home
Jimenez-Guzel’s mother is Meral Guzel, head of the U.N.’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator, a program under the agency’s umbrella focused on women’s rights, according to the New York Post, which dubbed the two suspects “alleged yuppie jihadis.”
Guzel’s LinkedIn profile touts her work on “gender equality,” “inclusive growth” and “competitive supply chains.”
Milo Sedarat gifting a pair of sneakers to a friend in a photo posted to Facebook. (Facebook/Janette Afsharian)
Jimenez-Guzel is charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison as well as another $250,000 fine if convicted.
Sedarat is charged with two counts of transmitting a threat in interstate or foreign commerce, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
Neither of them entered pleas at their initial appearances Wednesday afternoon.
Roger Sedarat walks outside of his home in Montclair, New Jersey, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. Sedarat’s son, 21-year-old Milo Sedarat, was arrested on Tuesday as a suspected accomplice in the thwarted plot to shoot up LGBT bars in suburban Detroit on Halloween. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
Sedarat’s father, Roger Sedarat, sat quietly in the back of the courtroom with a lawyer and another woman Wednesday as his son made his initial appearance. The elder Sedarat is an Iranian-American poet and English professor at Queens College, according to the school’s website.
He did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him for comment.
A split image shows still photos taken from surveillance video showing Mohmed Ali at a Michigan gun range. (Eastern District of Michigan)
Three additional suspects, including two brothers, were arrested in Dearborn, another Detroit-area community, and court documents have also pointed to two more juvenile suspects.
They have been identified as Dearborn residents Majed Mahmoud, 20, Mohmed Ali, 20, and Ali’s 19-year-old brother, Ayob Nasser.
They are accused of planning to stay in the U.S. to carry out the foiled Halloween plot.
Ayob Nasser, in black, is the fifth man to be charged in connection with an alleged Halloween terror plot in Michigan. His older brother, Mohmed Ali, was charged Monday alongside fellow Dearborn 20-year-old Majed Mahmoud. Separately, two more young men were arrested in New Jersey. (Eastern District of Michigan)
Jimenez-Guzel, the Washington man and other alleged co-conspirators are accused of plotting to travel to Turkey, then Syria to join ISIS as fighters, Habba said.
Federal investigators intercepted group chat discussions in which the suspects allegedly codenamed the Halloween plot “pumpkin” and discussed traveling abroad to join ISIS, a terror group known for brutal executions, mass casualty terror attacks in the West and briefly occupying large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
The plot remains under investigation, and more arrests are possible.
