DENVER — A Colorado man was arrested over the weekend on charges that he traveled to Israel and tried to firebomb the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, according to court documents obtained by Scripps News Denver.
Federal prosecutors in New York said Joseph Neumeyer walked up to the embassy on May 19 wearing a dark-colored backpack containing Molotov cocktails but got into a confrontation with a guard before he eventually ran away, leaving his backpack behind as the guard tried to grab him.
As he checked the contents of the backpack, the guard “noticed a strong odor of ‘pure’ alcohol’ coming from inside and saw a bottle with a black cloth protruding from its neck. In all, Neumeyer’s backpack contained three bottles “containing a clear liquid,” with at least one having a cloth protruding from the neck, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York.
Neumeyer, 28, who is originally from Colorado and has dual U.S. and German citizenship, had traveled from the U.S. to Canada in early February and then arrived in Israel in late April, according to court records. He also made several threatening social media posts in the months leading up to the attack, prosecutors said.
The attack took place against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza, now in its 19th month.
Police was able to track Neumeyer down to a hotel a few blocks away from the embassy thanks to surveillance footage where he was arrested after identifying “himself as the individual who assaulted a guard at the Embassy, and further stated, in sum and substance, that his backpack contained ‘Molotov cocktail bottles’ that contained vodka,” arresting documents show.
Israeli officials deported Neumeyer to New York on Saturday and he had an initial court appearance before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Sunday, the same day his criminal complaint was unsealed.
Neumeyer’s court-appointed attorney Jeff Dahlberg declined to comment, and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During his first term, President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital despite Palestinian objections and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested city.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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