US man arrested in suicide bomb plot at Kansas military base
WASHINGTON ( AFP) — Federal agents snared an alleged would-be suicide bomber with Islamic State ( IS) sympathies who was bent on attacking a major US military base Friday, in a sting operation worthy of a Hollywood thriller.
John Booker Jr., a US citizen, was arrested without incident outside Fort Riley, the sprawling Kansas home of the US Army’s storied 1st Infantry Division.
The 20-year-old was due to appear in federal court in the state capital Topeka later on three charges, including “attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”
“Anyone who seeks to harm this nation and its people will be brought to justice,” US Attorney Barry Grissom, chief federal prosecutor in Kansas, told reporters in Kansas City.
Booker — a failed US army recruit who has been on the FBI’s radar for the past year — was the latest terror suspect to be snared on American soil in an undercover sting operation.
His arrest also came eight days after the arrest in New York of two women who were unaware they had been sharing alleged bomb-plot plans with an FBI undercover agent.
It also came two days after the arrest in Chicago of a Wisconsin man accused of travelling to Turkey in hopes of joining IS fighters in Syria.
In a 2014 report, Human Rights Watch questioned counterterrorism sting operations that involve US law enforcement “effectively participating in developing terrorism plots.”