LITTLE ROCK — A Somali-born teenager attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore., was arrested Friday night by authorities who had spent nearly six months tracking him and setting up a sting operation, officials in Oregon said.
The bomb, which was in a van parked off Pioneer Courthouse Square, was a fake - planted by FBI agents as partof the elaborate sting - but “the threat was very real,” said Arthur Balizan, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Oregon. An estimated 10,000 people were at the ceremony Friday night, the Portland police said.
Balizan identified the suspect as Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Corvallis, Ore. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
“Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,” Balizan said in a statement released by the Department of Justice.
“At the same time, I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry outthe attack,” he added.
The foiled terrorism plot was the latest aimed at a mass gathering in the United States, including an attempted car bombing in Times Square in May. In that case, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested and pleaded guilty.
But unlike that plan, which the authorities learned about only at the last minute, an affidavit filed in the Oregon case indicates that the FBI learned early on of Mohamud’s desire to plot violence. His planning unfolded under the scrutiny and even assistance of undercover agents, officials said.
In a similar case in September 2009, a 19-year-old Jordanian was arrested after placing a fake bomb at a 60-story Dallas skyscraper. The same month, a 29-year-old Muslim convert was charged with placing a bomb at the federal building in Springfield, Ill.
In October, a 34-year-old naturalized citizen born in Pakistan was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb the Washington subway after meeting with undercover agents and discussing his plans and surveillance activities.
TIP FROM A MUSLIM
In the Oregon case, the FBI received a tip from a Portland Muslim who was concerned about Mohamud’s increasing radicalism, said a federal law-enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
That tip led the FBI to monitor his e-mail activity.
According to the law-enforcement official, Mohamud e-mailed a friend living in Pakistan who had been a student in Oregon in 2007-2008 and had been in Yemen as well.
For reasons that have not been explained, Mohamud tried to board a flight to Kodiak, Alaska, from Portland on June 14, wasn’t allowed to board and was interviewed by the FBI, the affidavit states.
Mohamud told the FBI he wanted to earn money fishing and then travel to join “the brothers.” He said he had previously hoped to travel to Yemen but had never obtained a ticket or a visa.
The FBI’s affidavit says the friend in Pakistan referred him to another associate, but gave him an e-mail address that Mohamud tried repeatedly to use but was unsuccessful. The official said FBI agents saw that as an opportunity and e-mailed Mohamud in response on June 23, claiming to be associates of his friend, the former student.
The FBI said that during the sting operation, Mohamud repeatedly expressed his desire to kill Americans. Reminded by FBI agents posing as accomplices that many children and families would be at the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, Mohamud said that he was looking for “a huge mass” that could “be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays,”according to the FBI.
Federal agents also said Mohamud thought Portland would be a good target because Americans “don’t see it as a place where anything will happen.”
“It’s in Oregon, and in Oregon, like, you know, nobody ever thinks about it,” the affidavit quotes him as saying.
Mohamud was very committed to the plot and planned the details alone, including where to park the van to hurt the most people, said a law-enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Dwight Holton, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, said, “This defendant’s chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people - even here in Oregon - who are determined to kill Americans.”
Undercover agents repeatedly asked him if he was prepared to go through with the bombing at Pioneer Courthouse Square, the affidavit says.
“I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured,” Mohamud told the agents, according to the affidavit.
Given the option to be in the van with the bomb, or detonate it remotely and then leave the country, Mohamud chose the latter option because martyrdom, he was quoted as saying, “required the highest level of faith.” He told the undercover agents that he was unsure whether he had that“high faith” after living in the United States.
Mohamud had told undercover agents that he had thought about committing a terrorist act since he was 15 and that he had written for an online publication supporting such actions, according to the affidavit.
Mohamud also said he thought it was “awesome” when people had to jump from the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and said he wanted to see body parts and blood after setting off his bomb, according to the affidavit. “It’s gonna be a fireworks show,” he reportedly said, “a spectacular show.”
A TRIAL RUN
At the end of September, Mohamud mailed bomb components to agents he thought were fellow operatives who would assemble the device, according to the affidavit. On Nov. 4, the agents traveled with Mohamud to a remote location in Lincoln County, Ore., where they detonated a bomb concealed in a backpack as a trial run, the affidavit says.
Before the planned bombing at the courthouse square, Mohamud put on a white robe and a white and red headdress, along with a camouflage jacket and read a written statement in front of a video camera, the affidavit says.
“For as long as you threaten our security, your people will not remain safe,” he said, according to the affidavit.
The statement spoke of his dream of bringing “a dark day” on Americans and blamed his family for thwarting him, according to the court documents:
“To my parents who held me back from Jihad in the cause of Allah. I say to them ... if you - if you make allies with the enemy, then Allah’s power ... will ask you about that on the day of judgment, and nothing that you do can hold me back ...”
As the clock ticked down Friday afternoon, Mohamud and an undercover agent reportedly drove a white van near the courthouse, where police had made sure a parking space was held open. The fake bomb in the back, constructed by FBI technicians, included six 55-gallon drums containing inert materials and diesel fuel, according to the affidavit.
They left the van near the downtown ceremony site and went to a train station where Mohamud was given a cell phone that he thought would blow up the vehicle, according to the complaint. There was no detonation when he dialed, and when he tried again federal agents and police made their move.
The authorities arrested Mohamud around 5:40 p.m. Friday, 20 minutes before the ceremony was planned to start. As he was taken into custody, he kicked and screamed at the agents and yelled, “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic phrase for “God is great,” the authorities said. The tree-lighting on the square went off without a hitch.
Defense attorneys in similar cases often accuse the FBI of entrapment. Anticipating such claims, undercover agents in Mohamud’s case offered him several nonfatal ways that he could serve his cause, including mere prayer. But he told the agents he wanted to be “operational.”
Mohamud is scheduled to appear in federal court in Portland on Monday and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if he’s convicted.
The arrest marks another episode in which a Somali-American has been accused of being drawn into radical attempts at violence.
In 2009, after a sweeping federal investigation of more than 20 young Americans believed to have joined the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia that is affiliated with al-Qaida, the authorities charged two of the men with providing material support for terrorism.
In 2008, another man under investigation blew himself up in an attack in Somalia, becoming the first known American suicide bomber.
There was no evidence that Mohamud had any current link to Somalia or was a sympathizer of the Shabaab.
Information for this article was contributed by Liz Robbins, Edward Wyatt, Colin Miner, Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane of The New York Times; by Justin Blum and Mike Harrison of Bloomberg News; and by Tim Fought, Nedra Pickler, Nigel Duara, Carrie Antlfinger and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/28/2010