{"id":363313,"date":"2025-11-08T00:09:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/363313\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T00:09:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:09:23","slug":"phoenix-man-sentenced-for-fake-christian-church-bomb-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/363313\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix man sentenced for fake Christian church bomb threats"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 A Phoenix man learned his punishment on Friday for targeting Christian churches with fake bombs in what was later determined to be hate crimes.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice said 46-year-old Zimnako Salah was sentenced to six years in prison.<\/p>\n

In September 2023, he left a backpack in the sanctuary of a Scottsdale church that looked like a bomb. However, a pillow and other clothing were found inside.<\/p>\n

In November of that year, he strapped a backpack around a toilet at a Christian church<\/a> in Roseville, California, a suburb of Sacramento. A church volunteer unzipped the backpack and found a pillow.<\/p>\n

\"FederalFederal prosecutors say Zimnako Salah, 44, left backpacks at two churches and was involved in suspicious incidents at two others, including one in Arizona.(U.S. Attorney’s Office)<\/p>\n

He tried to put suspicious backpacks in another California church and another in Colorado but security confronted him before he could do anything.<\/p>\n

Investigators said Salah had been building a bomb that could fit into a backpack<\/a> while making the fake threats. They found some of those bomb-making materials, such as ball bearings, nails and butane cylinders, at his Colorado storage shed.<\/p>\n

He had also searched online for videos of \u201cinfidels dying\u201d and watched videos of ISIS terrorists murdering people. He also said in a cellphone video that he wanted to destroy America<\/p>\n

He was indicted in February 2024.<\/p>\n

In April, a jury found Salah guilty of conveying a bomb threat hoax<\/a> for the Roseville incident. Officials classified the incident as a hate crime, as the jury found that Salah targeted the church because of its religion.<\/p>\n

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 A Phoenix man learned his punishment on Friday for targeting Christian churches with fake bombs…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":363314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,7182,1589,7183,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-363313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-azfamily","12":"tag-phoenix","13":"tag-phoenix-news","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115511176181671446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}