A somali 'youth' appears to have attempted to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland Oregon over the weekend.
It appears that he was caught in a FBI sting operation and as a result the bomb he attempted to detonate was a dud...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-portland-bomb-plot-20101128,0,7641294.storyTeen held in alleged Portland bomb plotBy Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times
November 27, 2010|6:17 p.m.Reporting from Washington —
Last August, Mohamed Osman Mohamud told two men who claimed to be Al Qaeda operatives that he had considered violent jihad since he was 15, and that he now was ready to commit mass slaughter.
Mohamud, 19, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, said he wanted to set off a bomb during the lighting of a giant Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving in an outdoor plaza in downtown Portland, Ore. The festive ceremony on the busiest shopping day of the year normally draws thousands of people.
"You know, the streets are packed," said Mohamud, a tall, thin student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, about 80 miles south of Portland. When one of the men responded that "a lot of children" would attend, according to an FBI affidavit, he replied, "Yeah, I mean that's what I'm looking for."
Mohamud shrugged off concerns about security at the event. "They don't see it as a place where anything will happen.... It's on the West Coast, it's in Oregon, and Oregon's like you know, nobody ever thinks about it," he explained.
But the two men were undercover FBI agents, and audio and video recorders captured that conversation and many others like it. Mohamud now sits in federal custody — the latest alleged domestic terrorist to fall for an elaborate FBI sting — after months of secret surveillance and a grisly plot worthy of Jack Bauer.
A 38-page FBI affidavit released Saturday paints Mohamud as highly determined and deadly serious. He is charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He is due in court Monday.
"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."
According to the FBI, they arrested Mohamud after he dialed a cellphone that he thought would detonate a huge bomb — six 55-gallon drums, diesel fuel and a large box of screws — in a large white van parked near the tree-lighting.
But the bomb was a fake built by the FBI, and the packed crowds who enjoyed a youth choir and a symphony orchestra at Friday's holiday celebration at Pioneer Courthouse Square were never in danger, authorities said.
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