Man pleads guilty to Seattle terror plot
U.S. role in Afghanistan spurred pair’s attack plan
SEATTLE – A man pleaded guilty Thursday to plotting an attack on a Seattle military complex with machine guns and grenades.
Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, 35, agreed to a prison sentence of 17 to 19 years, the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle said. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder U.S. officers and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Abdul-Latif was arrested June 22, 2011, along with an acquaintance from Los Angeles, when authorities said they arrived at a Seattle warehouse garage to pick up machine guns and grenades to use in the attack. Investigators had set up the buy after a confidential informant alerted authorities to the plan.
In conversations the FBI recorded with the help of the informant, Abdul-Latif and his co-defendant, Walli Mujahidh, discussed how they wanted to gun down people in the Military Entrance Processing Station in south Seattle as revenge for atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, prosecutors said. The military complex houses a federal day care center.
Mujahidh, 33, pleaded guilty in the case in December 2011.
“This defendant plotted to kill American servicemen and women, and other innocent people in furtherance of his extremist views,” U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan said of Abdul-Latif in a statement. “The continued vigilance of the community and the work of law enforcement ensured that we were able to successfully disrupt his deadly plan and bring Mr. Abdul-Latif to justice.”
Emails to Abdul-Latif’s defense attorneys were not returned.
In June, the defense lawyers filed motions seeking to get some of the prosecution’s evidence thrown out, saying the government should not have been able to obtain a secret warrant because there was no indication Abdul-Latif was involved in international terrorism. That motion was denied by a federal judge.