Pioneer Square bomber foiled

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with a plot to detonate a vehicle bomb at an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, on Friday evening, the Justice Department announced.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is a resident of Corvallis, Oregon, and a student at Oregon State University, according to the FBI.

Mohamud was arrested by the FBI and Portland Police Bureau after he attempted to detonate what he believed to be an explosives-laden van that was parked near the tree-lighting ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square,

Let's be glad that fanaticism tends to cloud judgment.
And much gratitude and a hearty slap on the back for law enforcement who obviously played this assclown like a fiddle.

The rest of the story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/11/27/oregon.bomb.plot/?hpt=T1

[cascadiance]

1. It's too bad someone in Corvalis got "retribution" by trying to burn down a mosque there!

Sheesh! I thought people in Oregon, especially places like Corvalis were more sane than that!

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/11/29/oregon-mosque-hit-by-arson-attack/

A rally against those terrorist Kristians!

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2010/12/peace_rally_at_oregon_state_draws_150_to_decry_mosque_burning_in_aftermath_of_portland_bomb_plot.html

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I think I may know his family

Given that Somalis have a personal name plus father's name plus grandfather's name, the possibility of two individuals having the same name is very high, but when I was tutoring two Somali women in ESL, they had a cousin named Osman Barre whose wife and children were still in Kenya. This was ca. 1994.

The biography fits.

If it's the same family, this is very sad. The entire extended family, both adults and teenagers, was hard-working and eager to learn.