US soldier arrested near Fort Hood ‘with bomb-making material’

Naser Jason Abdo detained at a motel near Fort Hood military base after being absent without leave for over three weeks A US army soldier has been arrested after police found him in possession of possible bomb-making material at a motel near Fort Hood, Texas. FBI special agent Eric Vasys said the soldier, who was absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was being held in a jail in the Texas town of Killeen, near Fort Hood, on an unrelated child pornography charge. The soldier was identified as 21-year-old Naser Jason Abdo, originally from the Dallas area. He disappeared from Fort Campbell over the 4 July weekend, Bob Jenkins, a spokesman at the base said. “Whatever threat Mr Nassar [sic Naser] posed yesterday or up until yesterday has been eliminated and mitigated, and there was nothing to indicate he was acting with anyone else,” Vasys said. He did not elaborate on the apparent threat, or on the charges Abdo might face. Vasys said he had no knowledge of any other arrests of soldiers. Abdo was arrested on Wednesday after a “concerned citizen” reported that he had firearms and smokeless gunpowder in his Killeen motel room, Vasys said. “A search of his motel room revealed that he had some components which could be considered bomb-making materials.” In June, the US military designated Abdo a conscientious objector to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that status was put on hold after he was charged over child pornography in Kentucky. Abdo applied for conscientious objector status in 2010 after he decided Islamic standards would prohibit his service in the US army in any war, military officials said. Fort Hood was the scene of a November 2009 massacre in which 13 people were killed and 32 others wounded. Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan was charged with the shootings and is expected to face a court martial in March 2012. US military United States guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.