Click here for video.
SEATTLETIMES.COM - A bomb left along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was sophisticated, with a remote detonator and the ability to cause many casualties, an official familiar with the case said Wednesday.
The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.
"They haven't seen anything like this in this country," the official said. "This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I've ever seen."
The FBI on Wednesday declined to reveal any details about the bomb, which was spotted by three city employees about an hour before the downtown parade was to start, said Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the Spokane office. The employees looked inside, saw wires and immediately alerted law enforcement, and the parade was rerouted.
The FBI received no warnings in advance and does not have a suspect, Harrill said. No one has claimed responsibility for planting the bomb.
The discovery before the parade for the slain civil rights leader raised the possibility of a racial motive in a region that has been home to the white supremacist Aryan Nations
"The confluence of the holiday, the march and the device is inescapable, but we are not at the point where we can draw any particular motive," Harrill said.
The Spokane region and adjacent northern Idaho have had numerous incidents of anti-government and white supremacist activity during the past three decades.
The most visible was by the Aryan Nations, whose leader Richard Butler gathered racists and anti-Semites at his compound for two decades. Butler was bankrupted and lost the compound in a civil lawsuit in 2000 and died in 2004.
In December, a man in Hayden, Idaho, built a snowman on his front lawn shaped like a member of the Ku Klux Klan holding a noose. The man knocked the pointy-headed snowman down after getting a visit from sheriff's deputies.
Harrill called the planting of the bomb an act of domestic terrorism that was clearly designed to advance a political or social agenda.
"The potential for injury and death were clearly present," he said of the bomb.
The FBI has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bomber.
Posts
Low-Carb Stuffing (with Sausage and Pecans)
12 hours ago
No shit? Dude. That's ridiculous. This ain't the world I want to pass on to my kids, IMO.
ReplyDeleteOK, one more... Lemme get ahold of people like that, with cameras running, and we'll see how many more wanna play copycat to the Middle Eastern virgin-chasers. On a lighter note... I strongly suspect that every one of the virgins the Muslim extremists "think" they'll meet in heaven as a result of their jihad will, without exception, be the Catholic nuns we grew up with from 1940-1970. You go, guys... ain't gonna be what you think it'll be :) As to other extremists... Like it or not, most of us are law-abiding and democracy-respecting people here, so the "legacy" you think you'll be leaving behind with your terrorist activities will be little more than one or two headlines before you're forgotten forever. There's better legacies to be left, if only you had a high enough IQ to figure it out. Stupid is as stupid does, and the more of you that die, or get caught, the fewer "stupid genes" there'll be in the pool. Keep it up, you'll be less than nothing in less than one generation.
ReplyDelete