A Muslim soldier was stopped just hours before completing assembly of a bomb that he planned to detonate at a restaurant full of Ft. Hood troops, prosecutors said during opening statements at his federal trial Tuesday.
After Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo was arrested at a motel near the Texas Army post in July, police found components for an explosive device in his room and backpack, which showed he “intended to commit mass murder,” prosecutor Gregg Sofer said.
Abdo, 22, faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and five other charges.
But lead defense attorney Zach Boyd countered in U.S. District Court in Waco that no bomb was ever built, and the government was “not going to be able to get around that fact.”
Abdo was absent without leave from Ft. Campbell, Ky., when he was arrested in Killeen. He told investigators he went to Texas to “martyr himself” for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, said FBI Special Agent C. Michael Owens, the first prosecution witness.
Owens testified that Abdo told investigators he planned to put a bomb in what looked like a gift box, leave it at a Chinese buffet frequented by Ft. Hood soldiers, wait outside and shoot any survivors.
“He said he wanted to give faith to brother Nidal … and said, ‘People think he’s crazy, but he’s not crazy, and I came here to remind the people,’ ” Owens testified.
Abdo was referring to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 shooting that killed 13 people and wounded more than two dozen at Ft. Hood. Hasan faces the death penalty if convicted at his military trial, set to start in August.