PORTLAND, Ore. — Some residents of this famously liberal city are unnerved, not only by a plot to bomb an annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony last week but also by the police tactics in the case.
They questioned whether federal agents crossed the line by training 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed O. Mohamud to blow up a bomb, giving him $3,000 cash to rent an apartment and providing him with a fake bomb.
The FBI affidavit “was a picture painted to make the suspect sound like a dangerous terrorist,” said Portland photographer Rich Burroughs. “I don’t think it’s clear at all that this person would have ever had access to even a fake bomb if not for the FBI.”
Mohamud pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday. His attorney said that agents groomed his client and timed his arrest for publicity’s sake.
Public defender Stephen Sady focused on the FBI’s failed attempt to record a first conversation between Mohamud and an FBI undercover operative. “In the cases involving potential entrapment, it’s the initial meeting that matters,” Sady said.
On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder rejected entrapment accusations. Once the undercover operation began, Mohamud, who officials said had no formal ties to foreign terrorism groups, “chose at every step to continue” with the bombing plot, he said.
To be sure, many Portlanders were unsettled that a terrorism plot could unfold in their backyard and not in much higher-profile cities such as New York or Los Angeles.
“What is distressing about the incident is not so much that the FBI arrested or otherwise intervened,” said resident Joe Clement, 24, “but that the FBI used him to create a scenario that scared a lot of people.”
The FBI set up a sting operation to investigate Mohamud after receiving a tip. Undercover federal agents helped Mohamud choose an apartment in Portland and instructed him to buy the equipment necessary to trigger the fake device.
Authorities say Mohamud parked a van full of explosives near the square Friday night and was arrested shortly after he dialed a cellphone that he thought would blow up the bomb. He was charged with attempting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction.
