Velentzas and Siddiqui repeatedly expressed support for violent jihad to an undercover agent, the complaint said.

“As alleged, the defendants in this case carefully studied how to construct an explosive device to launch an attack on the homeland,” Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

“We remain firm in our resolve to hold accountable anyone who would seek to terrorize the American people, whether by traveling abroad to commit attacks overseas or by plotting here at home.”

In 2009, Siddiqui wrote a poem in a magazine published by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that urged readers to wage jihad. In it, she declared there is no “excuse to sit back and wait — for the skies rain martyrdom.”