Oregon Teen Arrested in Plot to Bomb Holiday Event

**Solace** · 28-11-2010, 07:58 AM

Some people are just psychopaths.

A Somali-born teenager attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Ore., was arrested by the authorities on Friday night. They had spent nearly six months tracking him and setting up a sting operation, officials in Oregon said.

The bomb, which was in a van parked off Pioneer Courthouse Square, was a fake — planted by F.B.I. agents as part of the elaborate sting — but “the threat was very real,” said Arthur Balizan, the F.B.I.’s special agent in charge in Oregon. An estimated 10,000 people were at the ceremony on Friday night, the Portland police said.

Mr. Balizan identified the suspect as Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a naturalized United States citizen. He graduated from Westview High School in Beaverton, Ore., a Portland suburb, and was a sophomore engineering student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, authorities said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/us...land.html?_r=1