U.S. soldier indicted in Ft. Hood bomb plot

GlobalPost

A Texas grand jury on Tuesday indicted Naser Jason Abdo, a U.S. Army private accused of planning to kill soldiers from the Fort Hood military base with a pair of homemade bombs.

Abdo, 21, is charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device and possession of a firearm and ammunition by a fugitive from justice, according to a press release put out by the Western District of Texas' U.S. Attorney’s Office.

"At the time of his arrest, the defendant, an absent without leave (AWOL) soldier from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was in possession of [a] handgun plus instructions on how to build a bomb as well as bomb making components, including six bottles of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun shells, shotgun pellets, two clocks, two spools of auto wire, an electric drill and two pressure cookers," the press release states. "Court documents also allege that Abdo intended to use the materials to assemble two destructive devices with the intention of detonating them inside an unspecified restaurant frequented by soldiers from Fort Hood."

If convicted, Abdo faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the three counts he faces.

KWTX reports that Abdo, a native of Garland, Texas, joined the Army in March 2009.

Abdo was granted conscientious objector status after he refused to deploy to Afghanistan, CNN reports. But in May, he was charged with possession of child pornography, and in June he went AWOL, the Army said.

Abdo was arrested on July 27 in a motel room in Killeen, Texas, according to Reuters, where, in addition to the firearm and other materials, authorities found an article titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom."

At a court appearance on July 29, Abdo "shouted the names of Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist accused in the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, and Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, a 14-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2006," according to Reuters. 

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