Voice Of Post

Man Arrested For Capitol Plot, The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a 20-year-old Ohio man on charges that he plotted to mount a bomb and gun attack on the US Capitol and claimed to sympathize with the Islamic State (Isis).

Agents apprehended Christopher Cornell of Green Township, Ohio, on Wednesday after he purchased two ArmaLite M-15 semiautomatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, according to a criminal complaint released by the bureau.

Cornell, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, had confided his alleged plan to “kill employees and officers working in and around the US Capitol” to a confidential FBI informant, who told agents about Cornell in exchange for leniency for his “exposure” on an unspecified but unrelated offense.

Unlike several recent terror-related cases that have attracted the scrutiny of civil libertarians, undercover FBI agents neither suggested the plot to Cornell nor facilitated his acquisition of weapons, according to the complaint. In conversations throughout the fall of 2014 in Cincinnati, Cornell told the anonymous informant he “considered the members of Congress as enemies” and proposed the two perform reconnaissance around the Capitol in preparation for the subsequent attack.

The complaint indicates Cornell did not have substantial ties to Isis, and neither did the jihadist force that has overrun much of Syria and Iraq authorize or instruct him to attack the Capitol.

“I believe that we should just wage jihad under our own orders and plan attacks and everything,” the complaint quoted Cornell as saying.

The criminal complaint alleges that Cornell told the informant he was in contact with unspecified “persons overseas” but doubted “he would receive specific authorization” for an attack within the United States.

Over an instant-messaging platform, Cornell allegedly told the informant that “we already got the thumbs up from the Brothers over there and Anwar al-Awlaki before his martyrdom”. The US killed al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist, in Yemen in a September 2011 drone strike.

Cornell’s plan, according to the complaint, was to construct, place and detonate pipe bombs in the Capitol and follow up the bombing with rifle fire. While Cornell allegedly purchased the rifles and ammunition, the complaint does not indicate that he purchased materials for the improvised bombs.

The complaint indicates that Cornell and the informant discussed the “final steps” for their alleged intended travel to Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday. The arrest came the same day Cornell purchased the rifles, apparently legally.

The aftermath of last week’s terrorist attack in Paris, for which al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate on Wednesday claimed responsibility, has prompted fears of related attacks against other western targets. Jeh Johnson, the US secretary of homeland security, said on Monday the US did not possess “specific, credible intelligence” of a similar attack on its own soil.