Pagan Trees
Somali-born US citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was arrested after he attempted to blow up a car bomb at a Portland Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. The bomb was a fake; Mohamud had been set up by the FBI. He's quite a character!
The arrest at 5:40 pm last night capped an elaborate six-month sting operation, where undercover FBI agents pretended to be Muslim extremists who wanted to help 19-year-old Mohamud in his quest to wage violent Jihad. Mohamud believed the agents had assembled a bomb for him to detonate in a van at Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square as thousands gathered to see the tree lighting ceremony. But it was a dummy—when Mohamud dialed the number on his cell phone he thought would explode the bomb the FBI swooped down and arrested him.
Mohamud lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and he has had a colorful past as a burgeoning Jihadi:
- Under pen name "Ibn al-Mubarak," he wrote an article in 2009 for the inaugural issue of Jihad Recollections about how to shape up for violent Jihad: "Getting in Shape Without Weights." In it, he blasts "un-Islamic" gyms with "music, semi-naked women, free mixing and the danger of showing off." Instead, aspiring holy warriors should try the following weight-free strength exercises, helpfully illustrated with Jihadi models:
One might call him the Jane Fonda of Jihad. The Billy Blanks of Blowing up Christmas trees.
- Mohamud was also a rapper in a former life. According to the FBI's affadavit, Mohamud considered launching a Mumbai-style attack using small arms: "He said that because he had been a rapper, he could obtain a pistol or AK-47." We were unable to determine Mohamud's Jihadi emcee name, or the potency of his flow.
- He communicated with the FBI's undercover agent via gmail (truthbespoken@gmail.com) in text-message-speak. Here's an email from one of the undercover agents:
- He was planning on escaping the U.S. with a weird fake name: "Beau Coleman"
- He tried to blow up a Christmas tree. He told the FBI he chose the target because he wanted a "huge mass that will...be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays." It's like he was operating under the Fox News ideal of how terrorists should act.
So, there you go, another incompetent terrorist: foiled!
Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.
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