Canadian pleads guilty to assaulting U.S. federal prison guard with intent to kill

A Canadian man pleaded guilty Tuesday to assaulting a corrections officer at a federal prison in Pennsylvania with the intent to kill him and providing material support to ISIS.

Abdulrahman Bahnasawy, 27, was serving time in U.S. Penitentiary Allenwood, a maximum security facility about 154 miles northwest of Philadelphia, on Dec. 7, 2020, when he attacked two corrections officers using a part from his cell’s steel desk that he had fashioned into a weapon, the Justice Department said.

Bahnasawy stabbed one officer in the head and face, causing the man to lose his right eye, and stabbed another officer in her hand when she tried to help her colleague.

After Bahnasawy’s assault, prison staff found a pledge of allegiance to ISIS on a locker door in his cell, and found a note declaring “this is a terrorist attack for the Islamic State,” in his sock, the Justice Department said.

Bahnasawy pleaded guilty to multiple counts of assault, assault with the intent to commit murder, possession of contraband inside a prison and providing material support to the designated terrorist organization ISIS.

He faces a maximum sentence of 130 years in prison.

At the time of the attack, Bahnasawy was in the Allenwood penitentiary serving a 40-year sentence for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in the name of ISIS in New York City in 2016.

Bahnasawy and two co-conspirators planned the attacks but were foiled by an undercover FBI agent who joined the plot.

Bahnasawy was arrested in the New York City area after traveling from Canada in preparation for the terrorist attack, the Justice Department said in 2018.