By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The FBI said on Monday that an attack on the largest Jewish temple in Michigan earlier this month was an "act of terrorism" inspired by Hezbollah.
Ayman Ghazali, a 41-year-old man who was born in Lebanon and became a U.S. citizen in 2016, killed himself during the March 12 attack, when he crashed his truck into the Temple of Israel synagogue before opening fire on security guards and causing an explosion using fireworks, said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Detroit field office.
No one else died during the attack on the synagogue where children were attending preschool.
Ghazali consumed pro-Hezbollah ideology prior to the attack, said Runyan, but the FBI has not been able to verify if he was a member of Hezbollah. There is no evidence that he had co-conspirators, Runyan said.
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was founded by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982. Both Hezbollah and the IRGC are designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. The U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28.
"Had this man lived, I am convinced that my office would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the federal crime of providing material support to Hezbollah," said Jerome Borgen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Runyan said the day before the synagogue attack Ghazali started sharing photos on social media of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes last month. Then, on the day of the attack, while sitting in the parking lot of the Temple of Israel, Ghazali told his sister in a message that he planned "to commit a mass terrorist attack."
Antisemitic incidents have spiked in recent years in the U.S., with anti-Jewish incidents accounting for nearly two-thirds of 5,300-plus religiously motivated hate crimes since February 2024, according to FBI data.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Michelle Nichols and Bill Berkrot)
