IndieProPub.com
Written By T. C. Baker on Sunday, November 28th, 2010
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, behind the planned bomb in Portland told an undercover agent in August that he “had found the perfect location for a terrorist attack: the city’s annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony”.
He said during the hotel meeting he had “dreamed of carrying out an attack for years, and the city’s Pioneer Courthouse Square would be packed with thousands. A huge mass that will…be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.”
Mohamud, scheduled for court on Monday, has been followed for four years. When he was 15 and a student at Beaverton’s high school, he told undercover agents about a prayer he made for guidance “about whether I should…go, you know, and make a jihad in a different country or to make like an operation here.”
In one meeting, Mohamud told an agent, posing as an extremist, ways he could help “the cause” from “praying five times a day” to “becoming a martyr”. But, he “thought of putting an explosion together but that he needed help doing so.”
When he was warned several times of that women and children could die, he declined to back out.
Mohamud also made a video dressed in what he called “Sheik Osama style” which included a white robe, red and white headdress and camouflage jacket. In the video, he went on to “read a statement on his dream of bringing a dark day on Americans and blamed his family for getting in the way”.
In his statement, Mohamud said, “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.”
During the lengthy investigation, investigators allowed Mohamud to proceed with his plot to gain enough evidence to charge him with attempt. Friday, one of the agents drove a van filled with “six 55-gallon drums, detonation cords and plastic caps”. Authorities also provided him with a cell phone to “detonate” the bombs. The bombs were inert and authorities arrested him when he attempted to use the phone to cause a massive terrorist attack.
