(Target: America) “Plot to Bomb a Maryland Military Recruiting Station”

On December 8, 2010, a 21-year old recent convert to Islam, Antonio Martinez (a/k/a Muhammad Hussain), attempted to remotely detonate an SUV that he believed to be full of explosives outside a military recruiting center in Catonsville, MD, in an operation that was controlled by the FBI Baltimore field office. Martinez had intended to kill the military officers and federal employees who worked inside the recruiting center to retaliate against the U.S. military for its operations in Muslim countries.

The failed plot is similar in many ways to an ever-increasing number of cases in the U.S. whereby converts to Islam, who have no weapons or explosives training and who have an unsophisticated understanding of ideology and religion, are radicalized to the point they can sustain motivation to carry through with a deadly attack in the homeland. Martinez converted to Islam from Christianity less than a year before his would-be attack, and was inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki and by other clerics whose lectures he had viewed on the Internet. His target selection was based on his basic understanding of jihadi ideology, and his operational planning process was informed by other terrorism cases reported in the news in the U.S. (Read More)