An AWOL U.S. soldier facing a court-martial was gunning for "military personnel" when he was arrested with bomb-making materials near the U.S. military base at Fort Hood, Texas, authorities said Thursday.
Killeen, Texas, police arrested Pfc. Naser J. Abdo, 21, of Garland, Texas, on Wednesday afternoon at a motel near Fort Hood, Police Chief Dennis Baldwin said Thursday afternoon. He was arrested without incident and was being questioned at the Killeen City Jail by police and officers from Fort Hood's Criminal Investigative Division.
Confirming a report by NBC News early Thursday, Baldwin said at a news conference that "military personnel were targeted" at the base, where a gunman killed 13 people in 2009.
"I would call it a terror plot," he said, adding: "We would probably have been giving a different briefing here if he had not been stopped."
Abdo, an infantryman with the 1st Brigade Combat Team (Rear Provisional) of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., was arrested at an America's Best Value Inn on South Fort Hood Road, initially on child pornography charges stemming from an investigation at Fort Campbell.
Abdo went missing this month after he was recommended for a court-martial on those charges. Abdo, who has mounted an extensive public campaign to leave the Army, has denied he was involved in child pornography.
Tip from gun store
U.S. officials told NBC News that police went to Abdo's motel room on a tip from a gun dealer who said Abdo was asking suspicious questions about smokeless powder, a component often used in pipe bombs. Explosives were found in the room and in a backpack, the officials said.
A U.S. military official said Abdo was overheard saying he wanted to attack Fort Hood and that he repeated the statement after he was in custody. Authorities said it was not clear whether his alleged intended targets were soldiers in general or specific individuals on the base.
In an in-house alert it sent to Army facilities worldwide, the Army Operations Center said the suspect "admitted to planning an attack on Fort Hood." He had a bomb, a gun, a "large quantity" of ammunition and an Army uniform, said the alert, which was first reported Thursday morning by The Army Times.
Authorities would not confirm that Abdo had a uniform with him.
Police and the FBI said Abdo — pronounced AB-doo — would likely be charged with possession of bomb-making materials and transferred to federal custody.
The threat "has been eliminated and mitigated, and there was nothing to indicate he was acting with anyone else," said Erik Vasys, a spokesman for the FBI in San Antonio.
Baldwin agreed, saying, "We are not aware of any additional threats."
Child porn charges block discharge as conscientious objector
Abdo sought conscientious objector status last year, arguing that his Muslim beliefs prohibited military service. The Army approved his application in May, then, two days later, it charged him with possession of child pornography, which put his discharge on hold, he said on a Facebook page.
The page has since been removed, but Fort Hood confirmed Thursday that Abdo's conscientious objector application was approved "in May 2011" and that he was then charged with possession of child pornography on May 13.
"Since he is in the custody of civilian authorities, jurisdiction over any potential new charges is yet to be determined," the base said in a statement. "If returned to military control, he may face additional charges including AWOL."
Shortly before the Article 32 hearing last month that recommended he face a court-martial, Abdo told NBC station WSMV-TV of Nashville, Tenn.: "I did not put child pornography on the government computer." He said the timing of the charges "sounds pretty fishy."
A spokesman for the military said the charges were "completely unrelated" to Abdo's conscientious objector application.
Abdo's campaign to leave the Army got considerable coverage beginning in August, when he gave several televised interviews.
Child porn charges block discharge as conscientious objector
Abdo sought conscientious objector status last year, arguing that his Muslim beliefs prohibited military service. The Army approved his application in May, then, two days later, it charged him with possession of child pornography, which put his discharge on hold, he said on a Facebook page.
The page has since been removed, but Fort Hood confirmed Thursday that Abdo's conscientious objector application was approved "in May 2011" and that he was then charged with possession of child pornography on May 13.
"Since he is in the custody of civilian authorities, jurisdiction over any potential new charges is yet to be determined," the base said in a statement. "If returned to military control, he may face additional charges including AWOL."
Shortly before the Article 32 hearing last month that recommended he face a court-martial, Abdo told NBC station WSMV-TV of Nashville, Tenn.: "I did not put child pornography on the government computer." He said the timing of the charges "sounds pretty fishy."
A spokesman for the military said the charges were "completely unrelated" to Abdo's conscientious objector application.
Abdo's campaign to leave the Army got considerable coverage beginning in August, when he gave several televised interviews.
"As my time came near to deployment, I started asking the question more seriously whether God would accept what I was doing and whether I was really meant to go to war, as opposed to the peace that Islam preaches," he said in an August interview with Headline News. He made similar comments in interviews with al-Jazeera.
As recently as June, Abdo was pursuing his battle on the Facebook page, where he described himself as "engaged in a struggle against religious discrimination and for freedom of conscience in the US Army."
The last update was June 21, thanking his supporters. In his next-to-last update, posted nine minutes earlier, he says he could not find a way to delete the account and so "after this update I will be leaving." He did not say where he was going.
James Branum, the lawyer who represented Abdo during his proceedings at Fort Campbell, told the New York Daily News that he had not heard from his client "for quite a while."
"I'm not sure what to think about this," Branum said.
Fort Hood, the largest U.S. military base in the world, was the scene of a mass shooting that killed 13 people in November 2009. The arrest Wednesday raised concerns that a possible repeat attack may have been in the works.
The American-Statesman reported that the gun store where Abdo was first identified by a clerk was the same Killeen store where the suspect in the 2009 shootings, Maj. Nidal Hasan, bought a gun, ammunition and laser sights that he allegedly used.
"We are aware at this time that Killeen Police Department arrested a soldier yesterday," Fort Hood said in a statement. "We continue our diligence in keeping our force protection at appropriate levels."
Ft. Hood Plot Arrest
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