FBI 'Facebook sting' nets US man in car bomb case

FBI agents arrest young American who believed he was about to set off a car bomb at a US military recruitment office.

WASHINGTON: FBI agents arrested a young American on Wednesday who believed he was about to set off a car bomb at a US military recruitment office, the Department of Justice said.

Special agents used Facebook to nab the young man, 21, whom they said dreamed of jihad, plotted to carry out a personal strike against US forces - and then refused repeatedly to change course. Officials said the bomb he wanted to use, however, was a government-supplied fake.

Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, was arrested early Wednesday "after he attempted to remotely detonate what he believed to be explosives in a vehicle parked in the Armed Forces recruiting station parking lot," US Attorney Rod Rosenstein said. Martinez, of Baltimore, "was charged by criminal complaint ...with attempting to murder federal officers and employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property, in connection with a scheme to attack an Armed Forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland," Rosenstein said.

The recruitment post is in a shopping center in Catonsville, Maryland, between Baltimore and the capital, Washington. "An affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint alleges that on September 29, 2010, Martinez publicly posted on his Facebook account a statement calling for violence to stop the oppression of Muslims, and that on Oct 1, 2010, he publicly posted a message stating that he hates any person who opposes Allah and his prophet," a Justice department statement said.

Baltimore television WBAL-TV reported that the suspect was a US national of Nicaraguan descent, and a recent convert to Islam, although officials did not indicate that. Rosenstein stressed "there was no actual danger because the people M. Martinez asked to help carry out his attack actually were working with the FBI." But for Richard McFeely, a special agent at the FBI's Baltimore Division, Martinez posed a very real threat. "The danger posed by the defendant in this case was very real," he said. "Martinez was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack which would have cost lives."

Prosecutors said a "confidential source" (CS) of the FBI contacted Martinez through his own page on the social network site Facebook. "Martinez wrote that he wanted to go to Pakistan or Afghanistan, that it was his dream to be among the ranks of the mujahideen, and that he hoped Allah would open a door for him because all he thinks about is jihad. The CS provided copies of the communications to the FBI," the department said. When carrying out the "plot," officials in on the sting offered Martinez a chance to back out several times. But each time, they said, he forged ahead.

The case bore a striking resemblance to that of a Somali-American arrested in Portland, Oregon last month. In that case, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was charged with "attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction," after his arrest in November for trying to set off what he thought was an explosives-laden van parked near the tree ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. But the device was, in fact, a fake supplied by undercover agents from the FBI who had contacted Mohamud months before and pretended to be accomplices in the plot.

Martinez faces a maximum 20 years in jail for attempting to murder federal officers and employees. He also faces a maximum penalty of life in prison for attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against US federal property.