Pvt. Naser Jason Abdo (FACEBOOK)
FT. HOOD, Texas — An AWOL Muslim soldier who refused to be deployed to Afghanistan because of his religious beliefs has admitted plotting to attack Ft. Hood, Texas, the US Army said in a memo Thursday.
Pfc. Nasser Jason Abdo was arrested Wednesday afternoon by the Killeen Police Department near the Texas base — the site of a November 2009 massacre, allegedly committed by another Muslim serviceman.
The target of Abdo’s plot was to be a restaurant outside the Ft. Hood base frequented by base members, a senior law enforcement source told FOX News Channel. The attack was to involve at least one bomb blast followed by a shooting attack.
The 21-year-old suspect was found with a large quantity of ammunition, weapons and a bomb inside a backpack, according to the army memo, which added that he admitted to planning the attack during police interviews.
Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin confirmed that, based on statements Abdo made during questioning, “military personnel were a target of this suspect” and said he would characterize the absentee soldier’s plans as a “terror plot.”
Abdo was being held by Killeen police pending federal charges, Baldwin said, describing him as a “very dangerous individual” and adding that, “as far as we know, he acted alone.”
The suspect, a Texas native, was expected to be federally charged with possession of bomb-making materials as early as Thursday.
Abdo entered the service in March 2009 but applied for conscientious objector status in June 2010, on the eve of his first deployment to Afghanistan, citing his religious beliefs as a Muslim. In May 2011, just days after his application was approved, Abdo was hit with 34 counts of possession of child pornography and his military discharge was put on hold.
Abdo adamantly denied that he put child porn on his government computer and claimed the charges were the military’s way of retaliating against him. He told WSMV-TV last month, “I think that all sounds pretty fishy.”
The soldier then went AWOL on July 4.
A local gun dealer alerted police to the suspect Tuesday after he made a purchase at Guns Galore — the same Killeen ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan bought the weapons he allegedly used to kill 13 people and wound at least 30 more at the Texas base nearly two years ago.
Hasan allegedly stood up in a post deployment readiness center at Ft. Hood shouting “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is great” — before opening fire methodically from two handguns. He is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the attack and could face the death penalty if convicted.
On what appears to be Abdo’s Facebook page, or at least a page in support of him, the soldier is described as married and a Muslim.
One section of the page reads, “US Army Private First Class (PFC) Nasser Abdo is engaged in a struggle against religious discrimination and for freedom of conscience in the US Army.”
His favorite quotation is listed as, “Prayer and reflection have helped me to understand that I cannot be a soldier in the US Army and continue to remain true to Islam as I now understand it.”
Abdo often gave media interviews last year to discuss his fight against deployment when he was applying for conscientious objector status.
“A Muslim is not allowed to participate in an Islamicly unjust war,” he told ABCNews.com last August. “Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the US military.”
In a CNN interview, given around the same time, Abdo said he did not think his faith would be an issue when he enlisted. “I was under the impression that I could serve both the US Army and my God simultaneously,” he said, adding that he later questioned “whether God would accept what I was doing.”