Sunni Zealot Living in Arizona Sentenced for Plot Targeting Christian Churches

A Kurdish Sunni man from Northern Iraq, who has been living in Arizona for approximately 20 years, Zimnako Salah, has been sentenced to six years in prison in connection with his plot targeting Christian churches.

In March 2025, a jury in Sacramento, California convicted Salah of strapping a backpack around the toilet of a Christian church in Roseville, with the intent to convey a hoax bomb threat and to obstruct the free exercise of religion of the congregants who worshipped there. The jury’s verdict included a special finding that Salah targeted the church because of the religion of the people who worshipped there, making the offense a hate crime.

According to the evidence at trial, from September to November of 2023, Salah traveled to four Christian churches in Arizona, California, and Colorado, wearing black backpacks. At two of those churches, Salah planted those backpacks, placing congregants in fear that they contained bombs. At the other two churches, Salah was confronted by security before he got the chance to plant those backpacks.

While Salah had been making bomb threats by planting backpacks in Christian churches, he had been building a bomb capable of fitting in a backpack. During a search of his storage unit, an FBI Bomb Technician seized items that an FBI Bomb Expert testified at trial served as component parts of an improvised explosive device (IED).

A search of Salah’s social media records revealed that he had consumed extremist propaganda online. Specifically, those records showed that Salah had searched for videos of “Infidels dying,” and he had watched videos depicting ISIS terrorists murdering people. In a cellphone video taken days before the crimes of conviction, Defendant Salah declared, “America. We are going to destroy it.”