Undercover FBI agents arrested an 18-year-old American who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said Saturday.
Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen from Hillside, a Chicago suburb, was arrested Friday night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be extremists provided him with a phony car bomb.
The U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Chicago announced the arrest Saturday and said the device was inert and that the public was never at risk.
Daoud is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to damage and destroy a building with an explosive.
The FBI began monitoring him when authorities said he posted material online about violent jihad and the killing of Americans, federal prosecutors said. [Link]