PORTLAND, Ore, Jan 16: A Somali-born man charged in a Christmas-season bomb plot in Oregon was eager to “martyr” himself in a suicide mission, but FBI agents posing as al Qaeda operatives talked him into a plan to set off explosives remotely instead, one of them testified yesterday.
Returning to the witness stand on the second day of testimony in the trial of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, an undercover agent identified in court only by his pseudonym, Youssef, recounted offering the defendant a number of chances to back out of the plot.
But Mohamud’s determination to forge ahead with a plan to bomb a crowded outdoor Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on Nov. 26, 2010, in Portland never seemed to waver, Youssef testified.
The prosecution also played for the jury a brief videotaped message by Mohamud, recorded by his undercover FBI handlers about four weeks before the planned attack, in which he grimly states: “A dark day is coming your way.”
Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. Citizen and former Oregon State University student who was 19 at the time, is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in an FBI sting operation criticized by defense lawyers as a blatant case of government entrapment.
If convicted, Mohamud, now 21, faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
An FBI affidavit filed in the case says Mohamud was arrested after he tried to use a cellphone to detonate what he believed was a car bomb but was actually a harmless fake supplied by Youssef and a fellow FBI agent.
Youssef passed himself off as an al Qaeda recruiter, while his undercover FBI partner posed as an al Qaeda bomb expert named Hussein, according to testimony.
The fake bomb was planted in a van near a downtown square lined with shops and offices and crowded with thousands of people attending the holiday festivities, though authorities say the public was never in any real danger.
‘YOUR PEOPLE WILL NOT REMAIN SAFE’
In opening statements as the trial got under way last week, defense attorney Stephen Sady argued that his client would never have tried to carry out a bombing on his own and that the FBI “created a crime that would have never happened without them.”
But in FBI testimony and in secretly recorded video and audio tapes of his meetings with undercover agents, Mohamud was shown by the prosecution as an eager participant who originally wanted to “martyr” himself by driving a bomb-packed van into the outdoor plaza and blowing himself up with it.
(AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel