Weapons Suspect Implicated Self In Hate Vandalism
A Jewish Brooklyn man has pleaded not guilty to charges of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Police arrested Ivan Ivanov Monday after discovering pipe bombs and other weapons at his home.
Ivanov, who had long been suspected of a September spree of spray-painting anti-Semitic graffiti on houses, cars, playgrounds and two synagogues in his Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, implicated himself in the graffiti incidents during a search of his home Sunday and was arrested.
After Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge John Wilson set bail at $150,000 and ordered Ivanov to surrender his passport, his attorney Adrian Lesher told reporters his client was Jewish.
The New York Times reported that Ivanov told police that he was Italian by birth, raised in Bulgaria and trained by the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
A man suspected of having pipe bombs and firearms in his apartment made statements implicating himself in anti-Semitic vandalism of houses, cars and synagogues, police said.
But the attorney representing the man, Ivan Ivanov, said on Monday that his client is Jewish.
Investigators were trying to determine whether Ivanov planned to target synagogues and other sites he had defaced with the arsenal he had accumulated in his apartment, a ranking police official said.
Officers went to the home of Ivanov in the Brooklyn Heights section of the borough after he reported a gunshot wound to his finger Sunday, police said.
Investigators, who said the wound to his finger was self-inflicted, discovered what appeared to be a homemade bomb and several other devices and weapons.
The police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said Ivanov told police he planned to use the explosives on a fishing trip, detonating the devices underwater to bring the fish to the surface.
Investigators seized his computer and were searching the files, the police official said.