By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Somali-born teen busted in an FBI sting after trying to detonate a van with dummy explosives during an annual tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore., on Friday night, was angry at his parents for keeping him from jihad, the Oregonian newspaper reported.
The paper, citing government court documents, stated that Mohamud, 19, sent an e-mail June 25, 2010, to an undercover FBI operative saying he’d been “betrayed by my family” because he was unable to fly from the United Kingdom to Pakistan.
Mohamud said in a video that living in the U.S. “is a sin”, the paper reported.
“To my parents, who held me back from Jihad in the cause of Allah. I say to them, if you make allies with the enemy, then Allah’s power will ask you about that on the day of judgment …,” Mohamud said in the video, according to court documents.
The arrest was the result of an FBI sting in which the agency worked with Mohamud in assembling a bomb he tried twice to detonate on Friday night.
“The threat was very real. Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,” said Arthur Balizan, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oregon. “At the same time, I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack.”
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Portland Bomb Suspect Appeared to be Normal Teen (LA Times)
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