Somali-born teen arrested in bomb plot

[redrumloa]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nation ... 4021.story

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Undercover agents in a sting operation stopped a Somali-born teenager from blowing up a van full of explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, federal authorities said.

The bomb was a dud supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

"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,"

Glad they got him, but something worries me.

"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people — even here in Oregon — who are determined to kill Americans," Holton said.

Right, just wait for the next shoe to fall in losing your freedoms. Random pull-overs while you are driving soon with "enhanced pat downs" and a search of your vehicle?

 

[Glaucus]

There shouldn't be as this case proves that existing police powers are enough to catch the bad guys early in their planning stages.

 

[cecilia]

There shouldn't be as this case proves that existing police powers are enough to catch the bad guys early in their planning stages.

exactly. there have ALWAYS been criminals around.
why are people acting like this is new???

(some) Americans act like they don't know history.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

... but something worries me.

Something worries me too. This is another case of self justifying policing. This is another setup, a sting, a "find a likely foreign guy and give him a bomb so we can make a show about how we are keeping people safe". And it isn't the first such case.

In 1993 the bomb in the world trade center was supplied through FBI involvement. Sometimes these sort of sting operations can be used by the cunning as cover to move real devices into place.

But my real problem with this is that the police seem to have had cause to hook up with this guy (perhaps only that he had a big mouth) and they encouraged him to do something that he otherwise probably wouldn't have done. If he was really serious then they could have waited to see if he could assemble a bomb himself then arrest him for assembling a bomb. Or they could have waited to see who he contacted to supply him a bomb and developed more leads - perhaps even pulling in a big bomb maker. But they didn't do any of these things. They set the guy up to set off a bomb. We can tell only that he was capable and willing to drive a bomb and call a cell number.

If monitored and left to his own devices he would, in all likelihood, have never amounted to any kind of actionable threat but that doesn't create a news story and bring funding to the law enforcement/intelligence community and it doesn't keep the fear of terrorism in the public mind and without that fear the public will rebel against the continual encroachment upon their rights.

This is not good police work. This is theatre.

 

[Glaucus]

If he was really serious then they could have waited to see if he could assemble a bomb himself then arrest him for assembling a bomb.

They could, but there would still be guys like you accusing them of being part of conspiracy, so what would the point of that be? Btw, you're just assuming they encouraged him to build the bomb.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

If he was really serious then they could have waited to see if he could assemble a bomb himself then arrest him for assembling a bomb.

They could, but there would still be guys like you accusing them of being part of conspiracy, so what would the point of that be? Btw, you're just assuming they encouraged him to build the bomb.

The story says they gave him a fake bomb to deliver.

And, yes, this was a conspiracy - the agents worked together and in secret to execute a sting. They conspired. They were working for law enforcement so it wasn't an illegal conspiracy but it was a conspiracy nonetheless. Conspiracy doesn't mean "any crazy narrative that may or may not contain signals transmitted into your head by aliens or big foot". It just means people secretly working together.

 

[redrumloa]

There shouldn't be as this case proves that existing police powers are enough to catch the bad guys early in their planning stages.

Big Brother likes events to point at to justify our new police state. They point at things like the shoe bomber and underwear bomber as justification for the new strip search radiation boxes that cost tax payers in excess of $1B and violates the constitution 10's of thousands of times a day, if not 100's of thousands times a day, in spite of the fact these strip search radiation boxes WOULD NOT detect those bombs.

If you see more of these bomb plots foiled and publicized, the US public should be VERY nervous about what is next.

 

[Glaucus]

Big Brother likes events to point at to justify our new police state.

Well, you raise an interesting question: Should the government keep these types of cases secret? It would keep people calm perhaps, but it would also require secret trials and perhaps secret prisons. I would think it's best to keep things transparent. Part of living in a free society means you gotta be able to handle bad news, and yes, the news of the day is the are crazy people out there that would like to kill you.

They point at things like the shoe bomber and underwear bomber as justification for the new strip search radiation boxes that cost tax payers in excess of $1B and violates the constitution 10's of thousands of times a day, if not 100's of thousands times a day, in spite of the fact these strip search radiation boxes WOULD NOT detect those bombs.

Well, Americans could also stop and ponder why so many Muslims want to kill them. Citizens could pressure the government to change it's middle east policies. That would eliminate the US as a target, but that would also mean the terrorists really won and I just can't see the Americans going that way. If you want your cake and to eat it too, then you'll have to put up with the constant barrage of terror attacks. Even if you think the security is unnecessary now, eventually you will change your mind. I see no end to the Islamic militancy, at least while the us has standing armies in their homelands. Another alternative might be to just nuke all the arab states and take the oil fields, but we also know that's not gonna happen.

If you see more of these bomb plots foiled and publicized, the US public should be VERY nervous about what is next.

A bomb plot that is not foiled?

 

[Glaucus]

The story says they gave him a fake bomb to deliver.

And you said:

This is another setup, a sting, a "find a likely foreign guy and give him a bomb so we can make a show about how we are keeping people safe".

Sounds to me like you're accusing the police of entrapment. That would be the case if the guy in question had no intention to ever conduct a terror attack and the police convinced him that he should. There's no evidence to support this, hence my comment about "conspiracy" theories. The mere fact that the police substituted a fake bomb for a real one doesn't at all prove that they planted the idea of what to do with the bomb, or even to make the guy want a bomb in the first place. I think you're filling in a lot of blanks here.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Sounds to me like you're accusing the police of entrapment.

Entrapment in the legal sense simply means that the police encourage someone to break the law who otherwise had no intention to break the law. So long as the individual was willing to break the law then it's not entrapment. However, this comes close to thought crime.

What should we do with people who are willing to commit a crime but would be unable to manage it? Should we assist such people so that they may then attempt a crime they wouldn't have been able to pull off so that we can put them away? Is that a) time well spent, b) fair?

If someone is a potential threat then they should be watched and brought in at a time when their activities give justification to bring an action against them. If the person under suspicion brings in others then he is doing the police work for them by bringing in the others needed (and willing) to commit the crime. Any time the police step in to help someone commit a crime they are potentially changing the outcome by encouraging someone who may not have had the wherewithal to succeed. In a sense the police are mentoring people to become criminal enough to prosecute.

They knew who the guy was, they had cause to watch him. If there was anything they could have arrested him for they should have arrested him. They strung him along instead. They wanted to make a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[Glaucus]

Look, the guy made it clear he wanted to kill. It's still not clear where he got the explosives from, but even if the FBI handed them to him, he still went through with it. Conspiracy to murder is itself a crime, you only need to make a reasonable plan to be guilty. There's also little reason to believe he wanted to kill only via bomb, other weapons may have sufficed if bombs were hard to find. I personally have no issue with how this was carried out, he was a terrorist and was determined to terrorize. Was this made into a mountain? I think even if they arrested him sooner it would still make the front pages, don't you? Now at least they have enough to put him away for good.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

... but even if the FBI handed them to him, he still went through with it.

If nobody had handed him a bomb, would he have gone through with it? Maybe he would have gone on a shooting spree instead - but nobody really cares about shooting sprees. They are as American as apple pie. There have been so many of those that people understand the world goes on as before after one. Shooting sprees have no power to change policy even when the authorities try to label them "terrorism". Truck bombs are where it's at for scaring the rubes.

Conspiracy to murder is itself a crime, you only need to make a reasonable plan to be guilty.

And so they could have arrested him then, and I don't think it would have been a big story. The whole theatre of having him drive a fake bomb into a real crowd and try to set it off makes it a huge scary story. Remind the people that a bomb could be driven into a crowd any time (even if the cops knew about it - wooo).

It would have been a small policing action and it wouldn't have been a national story that reveals "methods" (- something the intelligence types are always harping on about so they don't have to reveal why they are so often wrong).

The fact remains that they led a radical to go further with his plans than a) was necessary to act against him and b) perhaps further than he would have got on his own.

 

[cecilia]

Maybe he would have gone on a shooting spree instead - but nobody really cares about shooting sprees. They are as American as apple pie.

OUCH!!!!
That hurt!

:mrgreen:

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

[youtube:3keinkl5]y_SFpydA2Wk[/youtube:3keinkl5]
This is the second case that I can think of in which the authorities were tipped off by fathers who were concerned about their sons (the other being the underbomber). I wonder how the fathers are feeling about how well the authorities have treated their children. (All sorts of things can happen when you ask the authorities for help - it could be worse, others have had their kids killed).
My biggest question is that given the years and dollars invested in this operation, couldn't he have been neutralized as a threat far more simply and cheaply, perhaps just with words?

 

[metalman]

It Just Isn’t Christmas without a Muslim Bombing

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

It Just Isn’t Christmas without a Muslim Bombing

And in 1999, Ahmed Ressam was an Algerian who tried to drive a bomb from Canada to LAX for the Millennium celebrations (even though the Millennium didn't start until 2001).

 

[Glaucus]

[youtube:1u0hq7fd]y_SFpydA2Wk[/youtube:1u0hq7fd]

If by "recruit" you mean some guy came up to the FBI and expressed desire to commit the crime even after the FBI agents questioned if he really wanted to kill innocent children, then ya, I guess they did recruit him. When people present conclusions built on "facts" they intentionally twist away from reality, I stop listening early on.

 

[Glaucus]

It Just Isn’t Christmas without a Muslim Bombing

And in 1999, Ahmed Ressam was an Algerian who tried to drive a bomb from Canada to LAX for the Millennium celebrations (even though the Millennium didn't start until 2001).

I was thinking that exact same event. But more importantly, Islamic terrorists attack their own on religious holidays as well. When it's muslim vs muslim, they tend to attack on religious holidays or events. There have been a number of pilgrimage bombings in Iraq when the Sunnis attacked the "heretic" Shia during pilgrimage. So there certainly is a pattern there.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

If by "recruit" you mean some guy came up to the FBI and expressed desire to commit the crime even after the FBI agents questioned if he really wanted to kill innocent children, then ya, I guess they did recruit him.

His father was worried about his radical views. He called the authorities and they approached him pretending to be terrorists that he could work with and then for two years they helped him put together a bomb - showed him a REAL bomb that they made and then let him drive the fake. This has a lot of psychological appeal - like the Mr. Big stings do. You take a nobody and hook them up with a sympathetic somebody (who happens to not exist) and they get a big ego boost out of it. They want to gain the attention and respect of the big guy and they'll do whatever it takes. The question is would they have done it otherwise and in most cases the answer is no - because if they would then you could just tail them until they did and arrest them properly. These stings have to be used to move the subject along a bit so that they can be arrested.

 

[Glaucus]

The question is would they have done it otherwise and in most cases the answer is no

And I guess this is where you're basing everything on, and that's something I honestly do not agree with. In fact, I believe the opposite: he would have done whatever he could to find a bomb. Now, it's quite possible that the bomb he'd find may not be in the US and the bomb he'd detonate may kill people who are not American, but there's little doubt in my mind that he would do what he'd need to do. We've seen plenty of young Islamists from the West travel to the Middle East to fight the holy war so this is hardly far fetched - especially when you consider he did have terror contacts overseas. And there's a realistic chance he'd come back with plans to blow up an airline like that kid tried last year on Christmas. So like you said, his own dad thought he was dangerous enough to call the cops. Would you call the cops on your child if you thought a little heart to heart could square him away?