Terrorist Plot At Crowded Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony
New terrorist plot in the United States, at a Christmas-related ceremony. A Somali-born teenager is suspected to have planed a car bomb attack during a Cristmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland on Friday, an event at which thousands of people attended. But, in fact, the bomb was just a dud given to him by undercover agents, taking part at a sting operations.
The 19-years-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested at 5:40 p.m., just a few minutes he had dialed a cell phone that he expected to blow up a van loaded with explosives. But, instead of blowing up everything, the call brought in the law enforcement officials who took him into custody. But the teen did not go down easy and began hitting the agents and the police while trying to escape, desperately screaming ”Allahu Akhkbar”. But, despite his efforts, he was arrested and charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
According to the prosecution, the whole operation began almost six months ago, in July, after an undercover agents found out that Mohamud, who is a naturalized US citizen living in Corvallis, had been in contact with an anonymous person in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier region. The two had been regularly exchanging e-mails, using coded messages, and, the officials say, Mohamud planed a trip to Pakistan to prepare for ”violent jihad”. He even tried to contact another Pakistani terrorist for travel arrangements, but the e-mail address for that person was wrong.
At the end of July Mohamud contacted an undercover agent he believed was affiliated with his first Pakistani contact. At the meeting, the teen boasted that he had written several articles that got published in Jihad Recollections, an online magazine that advocated violent jihad and even mentioned his plans to set up an explosive device during the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, an event that took place this Friday.
On Friday, the Somali teen and his so-called co-conspirator drove to downtown Portland in a white van. Inside the van they placed six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but the whole device was just a dude, unable to blow up. After parking the van near the place the ceremony would take place, they went to meet another undercover agent at the Portland train station. There Mohamud was given a cell phone and dialed the number he believed it would blow up the van. And when the explosive device failed to blow up, Mohamud got out of the car to improve the signal, but instead he was arrested. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars and pay a $250,000 fine.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud is the last one on a long list of US naturalized citizens plotting terrorist attacks on US soil. In May, Faisal Shazhad, born in Pakistan, tried to blow up a car bomb at a crowded street corner in New York. And last moth, another Pakistan-born citizen was arrested after planing to set off explosive devices inside the Washington-area subway stations.
