FBI Arrests Inglewood Man in Connection With Bomb Threat

The FBI on Tuesday arrested an Inglewood man on suspicion of calling police in New Jersey with a phony Al Qaeda bomb threat.

Bukhtiar Abdul Latif Katchi, 34, was taken into custody at his residence about 10 a.m. and later charged in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with one count of making a false bomb threat. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

According to FBI officials and documents, an anonymous caller telephoned the emergency dispatcher at the North Plainfield, N.J., Police Department on May 8 and reported that an Al Qaeda terrorist was going to blow up the British Consulate in Toronto.

The caller indicated that he knew of the plot because he was related to the alleged terrorist, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. The caller identified his relative by name and said the supposed terrorist worked at a store in Plainfield, the affidavit said. After investigating the call, according to the agent, authorities identified Katchi as the anonymous caller and determined that he had been involved in a long-standing financial dispute with the relative. The dispute involved property in Pakistan.

The day after the phone call, the agent said, authorities in California interviewed an associate of Katchi and were told that Katchi had admitted calling police in New Jersey to report the relative as a terrorist.

After that interview, investigators confronted Katchi at his residence, where he allegedly acknowledged making the bomb threat from a public telephone, using a calling card, the affidavit said. Katchi said he made the call after becoming angry because his relative had received money “that did not belong to him,” according to the affidavit.

Katchi said he had come up with the idea of calling in a bomb threat to police in the New York suburbs after watching recent television news coverage of an explosion in New York City, according to the FBI agent’s statement. Katchi will be held in custody pending a bond hearing Thursday.