Man charged in connection with online threat to synagoguesNEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A man accused of posting a broad online threat last week that spurred heightened security at Jewish synagogues and schools in New Jersey expressed admiration for white-supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof and said his planned attack was in retaliation for the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, federal prosecutors said in announcing a criminal charge Thursday.Omar Alkattoul, 18, of Sayreville, is charged with transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce and was scheduled to make his initial court appearance in Newark on Thursday afternoon, where he will be represented by a federal public defender.According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, Alkattoul expressed hatred of Jews and admitted posting online that “God cursed the Jewish people and God should burn gay people.” He also told investigators he had researched how to obtain a gun, shooting ranges, and mass shootings but in the days before posting his threat was “about ‘50/50’” on whether he would actually carry out an attack.About Roof, who killed nine members of a Black South Carolina church congregation in 2015, Alkattoul allegedly said in a private online message that “a lot of Muslims in the west should learn from him.”Alkattoul used a social media app on Nov. 1 to send a link to a document entitled “When Swords Collide,” according to prosecutors, and he admitted to the person he sent it to that he wrote the document, stating: “It’s in the context of an attack on Jews.” According to the second individual, Alkattoul also sent the document to at least five other people using another social media application.Public warnings about nonspecific threats against Jewish institutions, made by groups including Christian supremacists and Islamist extremists, aren’t unusual in the New York City area, and many turn out to be false alarms."