from the oregonian: The FBI thwarted an attempted terrorist bombing in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square before the city's annual tree-lighting Friday night, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oregon. A Corvallis man, thinking he was going to ignite a bomb, drove a van to the corner of the square at Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue and attempted to detonate it.
However, the supposed explosive was a dummy that FBI operatives supplied to him, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint signed Friday night by U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, was arrested at 5:42 p.m., 18 minutes before the tree lighting was to occur, on an accusation of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The arrest was the culmination of a long-term undercover operation, during which Mohamud had been monitored for months as his alleged bomb plot developed.
"The device was in fact inert, and the public was never in danger," according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The investigation involved the FBI, Oregon State Police, Portland Police Bureau, Corvallis Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.
Mohamud will appear in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday.
audio update: media monarchy on ground zero w/ clyde lewis
updates: fbi thwarts its own carbomb*
feds plant inert bomb in portland before arresting muslim man*
patsy set-up by feds in christmas tree bombing plot*
fbi apparently set up US teen blamed for fake car bomb*
fire at oregon islamic center attended by osman; no injuries*
video: oregon mosque attended by bomb plot suspect target of apparent arson*
deputies investigate assault on muslim inmate in portland jail*
video: friends, defense say teenage portland patsy set-up by fbi*
arrest of former osu student stuns friends*
'christmas tree bomber' in touch with qaeda*
glenn greenwald on the fbi's missing tapes*
fbi celebrates that it prevented fbi's own bomb plot*
paul craig roberts: fabricating terror*
will portland join joint terrorism task force?*
flashback: the portland seven*
thanks to prison planet for helping expose the terronoia!
updates on the portland patsy
3 comments:
Gosh, I wonder why he did it? The article never mentions that he's Moslem, so I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.
This is NOT an example of a disaster narrowly averted by the heroism of Big Brother, but another tale of government abuse and faux crisis.
The kid was nothing more than another loudmouth teen, until he was entrapped by the FBI.
How many drunks sitting around at a bar right now are angrily talking about how if they only had a gun, they'd shoot their traitorous wife/girlfriend? 99.9% of whom will go home and sleep it off...unless we set up a Constitution-violating strike force to hang out in bars offering to sell guns to those drunks whenever they can find one.
When the government entraps someone, we have no way of knowing whether they would have actually ever done anything, on their own.
Our police state has now routinely adopted many methods that violate the principles of justice...not just entrapment, but also extorting and bribing witnesses, coercive interrogation techniques, random searches, confiscation of property without sufficient cause...really, they do far more harm than good, overall.
Shades of London on July 7th 2005?
Except that on that day it's likely that the patsies were persuaded to carry what they thought were dummy charges for a training exercise, but which turned out to be real.
Post a Comment