One of the two men accused of planning to attack an unspecified synagogue in New York City is Jewish and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, his counsel said in court.
Matthew Mahrer, 22, in Manhattan Criminal Court on accusations of criminal possession of a weapon, was ordered held on $150,000 bail or a $300,000 bond despite his lawyer’s request that he be freed on his own recognizance and the prosecutors’ recommendation that he be held without bail.
“There are a lot of questions here,” defense attorney Brandon Freycint said of Mahrer, who has allegedly been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, anxiety and ADHD, the New York Post reported.
“My client is of Jewish heritage. He resides with his parents and his grandfather is actually a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor—and my client is his part-time caretaker,” Freycinet said.
According to police sources, Mahrer and a friend named Christopher Brown were detained on Friday while riding the Long Island Rail Road. Brown was seen carrying guns and a Nazi armband.
The arrests came after a threat to attack a synagogue and tweet “Gonna ask a priest if I should become a husband or shoot up a synagogue and die” was traced to one of the men’s computers, sources told CNN.
According to the Post, prosecutors said police confiscated a loaded handgun with an extended magazine and a bulletproof vest from Mahrer’s Upper West Side apartment, which he and the friend planned to use in a synagogue attack. JNS
See? We must bend over backwards, twist ourselves into pretzels, and use wild creative imagination in order to be dan licaf zchus those that are physically trying to kill us. Remember: HE’S NOT FRUM YET!!!!!!
Details are sketchy. “Jewish heritage”. What does that mean? And what is a “survivor”? That term has been used broadly to define anyone living in the general area past mid-1930s. Some Russians have claimed survivor benefits despite never having been in harm’s way. I would be skeptical of this defense until I heard more…
I hate to shock anyone , but not everything that every attorney says is necessarily true
He is not Jewish if only his grandfather, but not his maternal grandmother, is Jewish. Note that the attorney does not say that he’s Jewish, only that he is of Jewish heritage i.e. has Jewish ancestry.
The man obviously has not adopted the law or spirit of the Torah, to say the least.
If he truly is afflicted with autism, bipolar disorder, anxiety and ADHD and – as his behavior has proven – is a danger to society, then he should be treated for his conditions in a closed psychiatric ward, away from place or contact where he can cause harm. And once they think that he’s balanced, he should sit in jail so that he’ll think it over many times before daring to participate in mass murder.
No matter what the circumstance – grandson of a Holocaust survivor or otherwise – he cannot be a free man.