A 21-year-old loner from Pennsylvania had an arsenal in his room, an Islamic radical online persona and paramilitary training videos before his arrest last week for biting two FBI agents, prosecutors said in court Thursday.Therefore, Emerson Begolly will remain imprisoned pending trial, U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill decided, over the strong objections of the defense attorney who said his client was not violent. A magistrate judge's decision last week to send him to a halfway house was shelved.
Begolly "has a strong desire to kill non-Muslims and many other groups of people," Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo C. Song said. "He was preparing, and he was getting closer and closer to bringing his words and aspirations to fruition."
Public defense lawyer Marketa Sims, representing Begolly, responded that his actions before agents startled him -- legally owning guns, posting radical views online -- were constitutionally protected. "They had no probable cause to believe that he committed any crime."
Begolly was arrested after two FBI agents approached him at a fast food restaurant, seeking to talk to him while other agents executed search warrants on his father's farmhouse and his mother's house.
He is accused of reaching for a pistol, for which he had no concealed carry permit, then biting the agents as they wrestled him into custody. He is charged with assault upon an officer and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime.
An initial hearing last week featured thirdhand testimony, poems and chants attributed to Begolly. On Thursday, prosecutors presented new evidence, gained from the execution of still-sealed search warrants in another federal court district.
Begolly's bedroom contained 14 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammo, a phony hand grenade, a helmet and a gas mask. Three of the weapons, including one under his pillow, were AK-47-type rifles. Rifle rounds that were found in the bedroom he sometimes used in his mother's home.
FBI Special Agent Thomas W. Ferguson III attributed to Begolly online communications from a person using the nym Abu Nancy. Some appeared on "a radical jihadi website", others were from online chats, all were from last year, according to the agent.
One message discussed how an old Buick could be turned into a car bomb using gasoline and propane tanks that could be ignited with a gunshot.
Another mentioned "being a suicide martyr on your school," or taking schoolchildren as hostages and demanding the release of Muslim prisoners.
"Clearly, not just military, but also civilian targets can be used," Ferguson read from a transcript of the message. "How can [Western forces] destroy our weddings and not expect to pay?"
Other messages said that the writer wanted more training before becoming a martyr, and would get it in the "mountains."
Still other online messages dealt with how to handle an arrest attempt. "I would make Waco look like a tea party," one post read by Ferguson said, and another suggested that anyone faced with arrest should hurt the agent any way possible, in order to become a martyr.
Ms. Song showed videos that she said were on the laptop computer in which a person Ferguson identified as Begolly fired a rifle at a pumpkin, and other things.
A voice identified as that of Shawn Begolly, the defendant's father, can be heard on some of the videos. In one, the voice said, "Now you wounded him now" in reference to a direct hit on the pumpkin.
Sims said he was accused of no violence "other then against a pumpkin" before the FBI agents "snuck up on him" sitting in his mother's car. She noted that he suffers from Asperger's syndrome.
What the government characterized as terrorist training was "common tomfoolery up there", Ms. Sims said. She questioned whether the online messages were really authored by Begolly.
She said he was being held in an psychiatric ward and didn't even have a bed. "The fact that he says things on the Internet that some people don't agree with doesn't mean you put him in a nuthouse," she said.
Judge Cohill said there was enough evidence against Begolly, and enough concern about his "mental condition," to hold him in jail.