LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Army veteran who converted to Islam and discussed launching various terror attacks throughout Southern California was arrested as he plotted to bomb a white supremacist rally as retribution for the New Zealand mosque attacks, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Mark Domingo, an infantryman who served a combat stint in Afghanistan, was arrested Friday after visiting a park in Long Beach where authorities said he planned to plant home-made explosive devices made with nail-filled pressure cookers in advance of a Nazi rally scheduled Sunday.
Domingo, 26, was arrested on a charge of providing material support to terrorists. A criminal complaint said he had been planning since March to “manufacture and use a weapon of mass destruction in order to commit mass murder.”
“This is a case in which law enforcement was able to identify a man consumed with hate and bent on mass murder, and stop him before he could carry out his attack,” Hanna said. “The criminal case outlines a chilling terrorism plot that developed over the past two months and targeted innocent Americans that he expected to gather this past weekend.”
Investigators said Domingo posted an online message March 3 that said.
He also allegedly discussed killing a neighbor he was upset with as a prelude to broader violence and later contemplated bombing the Santa Monica Pier, where he said a summer attack on the crowded tourist spot would maximize casualties because people wouldn’t be able to escape the blast in the enclosed space.
Eventually, he settled on the idea of planting an improvised explosive device that would be remotely triggered or detonated by a timer at a white supremacist event, investigators said. The confidential source connected him with a purported bomb maker who was actually an undercover police officer.
The plot was thwarted just two days ahead of the event, investigators said, when an FBI SWAT team arrested Domingo after he was given the pressure cookers and surveyed Bluff Park in Long Beach, where the rally was supposed to happen.
White nationalists, however, never showed up at the park Sunday. Instead, a large group of counter protesters demonstrated for peace.
So, which is it? Nazis, White Supremacists, White Nationalists or "innocent Americans?"
Also, I challenge anyone to try successfully archiving the original link using either archive.org or archive.fo by just pasting the link
Protip: you can't
News organizations don't want their own articles archived for (((reasons)))
apnews.com
web.archive.org