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Home Front: WoT | ||||||
Yout charged with trying to blow up Chicago bar | ||||||
2012-09-16 | ||||||
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, which announced the arrest Saturday, said the device was harmless and the public was never at risk. Daoud is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to damage and destroy a building with an explosive. Someone who answered a call to Daoud's home in Hillside on Saturday who said her name was Hiba and that she was Daoud's sister declined to discuss Daoud, the family or the arrest. "We don't even know anything. We don't know that much. We know as little as you do," she said. "They're just accusations." "We'd like to be left alone," she said.
Prosecutors say that after being introduced to an undercover FBI agent who claimed to be a terrorist living in New York, Daoud set about identifying 29 potential targets, including military recruiting centers, bars, malls and tourist attractions in Chicago. Shortly after 7 p.m. Friday, Daoud met in the suburb of Villa Park
Daoud drove the vehicle and parked in front of a bar that was among the pre-selected targets, then walked a block away and attempted to detonate the device by pressing a triggering mechanism in the presence of the agent, according to the affidavit. He was then arrested.
Prosecutors said Daoud was offered several chances to change his mind and walk away from the plot. The affidavit said the Daoud was active in jihadist Internet forums and was accessing articles written by Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric who became a key figure in the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. In his communications with one of the FBI agents about possible targets, Daoud allegedly said he wanted to carry out an attack that would kill a large number of people. "I wanted something that's ... massive; I want something that's gonna make it in the news," he wrote, according to the affidavit. "I want to get to like, for me I want to get the most evil place, but I want to get a more populated place."
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Posted by:Steve White |