FBI video shows admitted terrorist

Oakland man seen as either plotting to kill or ‘coward’

An Oakland man who pleaded guilty to a terrorrelated charge after boasting about wanting to kill thousands was either plotting a Bay Area attack or trolling people online with no intention of committing violence.

Those were the competing theories laid out by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and lawyers for 23-year-old Berkeley High graduate Amer Sinan Alhaggagi during a sentencing hearing that began Monday at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Alhaggagi pleaded guilty in July to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group, leaving his lawyers to seek leniency from Judge Charles Breyer, who must decide if Alhaggagi will spend years or decades in prison.

The sentencing comes after officials released footage of Alhaggagi detailing how he’d lace cocaine with poison, plant bombs in UC Berkeley dorms and set the Oakland hills ablaze. Alhaggagi’s words were captured on hidden camera by an undercover FBI agent more than two years ago, and the footage was recently unsealed.

“Alarmed at the detail, sophistication and bloodthirstiness of his plans, a nationwide team of FBI agents worked around the clock first to identify the defendant, then to surveil him 24 hours a day, and finally to introduce an undercover agent to try and de-

fuse his plans,” prosecutors wrote.

The defendant’s attorneys see the case as an overreach by agents who ensnared an immature man in a bogus plot. A defense witness, Dr. Marc Sageman, described Alhaggagi as a “coward” who wrote disturbing things online but was never violent.

“My conclusion is Mr. Alhaggagi did not think of himself as a soldier for the Islamic State and in that sense, he is not a terrorist,” said Sageman, a forensic psychologist and former CIA case agent.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Waqar Hasib played a recording of Alhaggagi speaking with the undercover FBI agent about a plot to bomb nightclubs in San Francisco.

“And, you know, they’re all crowded so it doesn’t matter which one we hit,” said a voice identified as Alhaggagi’s.

Alhaggagi faces up to 47 years in prison, while the defense is seeking 6 to 7 years. The hearing will continue in January.

The prosecution said it plans to call as witnesses two jailhouse informants who said Alhaggagi discussed building bombs and plans to blow up the federal courthouse where Monday’s hearing was held.

Alhaggagi was indicted last year after telling the undercover FBI agent he was planning to kill 10,000 people in the Bay Area before fleeing the country and joining the Islamic State, prosecutors said.

They said Alhaggagi spelled out his plans to the undercover FBI agent posing as a bombmaker on July 29, 2016. The video showed Alhaggagi in the passenger seat of a car as a blurred-out FBI agent drove him around the East Bay.

The footage opened with Alhaggagi describing how he’d ordered strychnine on a Chinese website with a fake credit card and shipped it to a fake address through UPS. When the agent asked what he planned to do, Alhaggagi responded, “Well, we were thinking about either selling it as drugs or mixing it in drugs.”

Alhaggagi later explained how he could torch the hills of Oakland and Berkeley with gasoline and a match.

“And we can just drive and do it real quick and drive away, smoothly,” he said.

What followed was a guided tour of the Berkeley hills, with Alhaggagi pointing out his marks, one of which was the UC Berkeley dorms.

“Yeah,” Alhaggagi said, smiling. “I’d like to kill the students.”

He said there was lax security at UC Berkeley buildings, and that he was familiar with the area.

“I’ve been so excited about it. I’ve been hyped up. Like, how I’m seeing it, we could get away so easily,” he said. Alhaggagi noted that the two wouldn’t need to plant the bombs themselves.

“There are so many homeless people here that would do it for you, for like a dollar or something,” he said. “Like I could tell them to walk into the YMCA with a bag and they’ll do it and we could detonate it from outside.”

Summing up his plans, he said, “I want to make it so that every American here thinks twice or three times before he leaves his home.”

FBI agents said Alhaggagi obtained a bomb-making manual produced by the Islamic State and wrote a suicide note.

Alhaggagi’s mother, Naayem, pleaded with Judge Breyer for leniency. She told him in a letter that her son was a “loving” and “energetic” boy who was protective of his siblings, but that his demeanor shifted when the family moved to Yemen when Alhaggagi was about 6.

“I feel that the moment we arrived in Yemen and as he grew older, Amer was no longer the sweet young boy that came to me whenever something was bothering him,” she wrote. “I believe my son has reached a breaking point in his life and I believe he genuinely needs the support and care of his family and community.”