DALLAS — A 19-year-old Jordanian man living in Texas was arrested Thursday on charges he intended to bomb a Dallas skyscraper, federal officials said, while an Illinois man was arrested in a similar but unrelated case on Wednesday.
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested after placing what he believed to be a car bomb outside the 60-story Fountain Place office tower, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas. The decoy device was given to him by an undercover FBI agent posing as a memeber of al-Qaeda, the statement said.
Smadi is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Federal officials say the case has no connection with the terrorism investigation underway in Colorado or the Thursday arrest of a man facing the same charge in Springfield, Ill.
There, a 29-year-old man who idolized American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh was arrested after attempting to detonate what he thought was a bomb inside a van outside a federal courthouse, officials said Thursday. The fake device had been provided by FBI agents posing as al- Qaeda operatives.
Decatur resident Michael C. Finton, also known as Talib Islam, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of attempting to murder federal officers or employees and trying to detonate a weapon of mass destruction.
