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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

FBI accuses man of bomb attempt

Ben Nuckols Associated Press

BALTIMORE – A 21-year-old part-time construction worker obsessed with jihad was arrested Wednesday when he tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb at a military recruitment center – the second time in less than two weeks that an alleged homegrown terrorist was nabbed in a sting operation.

Antonio Martinez, a naturalized U.S. citizen who goes by the name Muhammad Hussain, faces charges of attempted murder of federal officers and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The bomb he’s accused of trying to detonate was fake and had been provided by an undercover FBI agent. It was loaded into an SUV that Martinez parked in front of the recruiting center, authorities said, and an FBI informant picked him up and drove him to a nearby vantage point where he tried to set it off.

“There was never any actual danger to the public during this operation this morning,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said Wednesday.

Martinez, who had recently converted to Islam, appeared in U.S. District Court in Baltimore Wednesday afternoon and was ordered held until a hearing Monday. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on the weapon of mass destruction charge and 20 years on the attempted murder charge.

Martinez told an FBI informant he thought about nothing but jihad, according to court documents. He wasn’t deterred even after a Somali-born teenager was arrested in Portland the day after Thanksgiving in an FBI sting.

An undercover FBI agent they were working with advised the informant to turn the tables on Martinez and make him think the agent did not trust him. Martinez told the informant he planned to assure the agent that he knew “what happened to the brother in Oregon … we don’t work for those people.”

According to the court documents, the informant first contacted the FBI on Oct. 8 after communicating with Martinez through Facebook, where he had posted notes that alluded to jihad.