Officials said the March 12 terrorist attack against a Michigan synagogue was inspired by Hezbollah.
Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, shot himself when confronted by security guards at Temple Israel synagogue near Detroit after his explosive-laden truck failed to detonate. Reports shortly after his death revealed his relatives in Hezbollah had been killed in an Israeli airstrike shortly before. Officials now say the militant Shia group directly inspired the attack.
“He committed the terrorism crime of providing material support to Hezbollah,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Eastern Michigan Jerome Gorgon told CBS News.
Under federal law, the attack itself constituted material aid to Hezbollah, he explained.
Federal officials claimed to have obtained videos of Ghazali recorded in the parking lot of the temple, during which he detailed his “operation” and intention to “kill Jews and burn their world.” His phone was recovered at the site of the attack.
Authorities also found his phone search history, which included “pro-Hezbollah news, shootout videos, live coverage of [Hezbollah leader] Naim Qassem, and news coverage of an Iranian fatwa for jihad against the U.S. military,” Gorgon said.
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Ghazali lived in Dearborn, Michigan, and became a U.S. citizen in 2017. Two of his brothers were members of Hezbollah’s rocket unit and were killed in a March 5 Israeli drone strike, carried out as part of the wider war with Iran.
Hezbollah was designated a terrorist group by the United States in 1997. While once a powerhouse in the Middle East, it was ravaged by its war with Israel in 2024 and faces an existential threat in its war with the Jewish state.