Thursday - July 26, 2012

Bridge Haters

Meant to post this yesterday but family issues got in the way. As usual.

AKRON, Ohio - One of five men charged with plotting to bomb an Ohio highway bridge pleaded guilty Wednesday and agreed to testify against his co-defendants.

Anthony Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, who has a criminal record for theft and breaking and entering, pleaded to all three counts against him in U.S. District Court. His attorney, Michael O’Shea, said Hayne hopes to get leniency in return for his testimony.

Under the terms of the surprise plea deal, Hayne will have the chance to avoid a life prison term. With the plea and offer of testimony for the prosecution, he could face 15 years to nearly 20 years in prison.

“I don’t think any of these guys intended harm to human beings,” O’Shea said. “I think they just thought this was a way of making some sort of political statement. But I’m relatively confident none of these people had any desires to actually hurt anybody.”

O’Shea said Hayne was a latecomer to the alleged plot and, as such, had the least standing to argue that he had been manipulated by an FBI informant as other defendants have contended.

Authorities have called the men anarchists, and investigators say the group planted what turned out to be a dud bomb provided by an FBI undercover informant on a bridge south of Cleveland and then tried to detonate it.

The defendants could face life in prison if convicted.

U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach said the government would now turn its attention to proving the case against the other four men. “We are pleased with today’s guilty plea and are prepared to prove the allegations against the remaining defendants,” he said in an emailed comment.

The five were charged with plotting to bomb a bridge linking two wealthy Cleveland suburbs by placing what they thought were real explosives at the site and repeatedly trying to detonate them using text messages from cellphones, according to the FBI affidavit.

The FBI said the suspects bought the explosives - actually fake - from an undercover employee and put them at the base of a highway bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland.

After leaving the park, they tried to initiate the explosives using a text-message detonation code, and they called the person who provided the bombs to check the code when it failed, according to the FBI affidavit.

The men also discussed other potential targets, including a law enforcement center, oil wells, a cargo ship or the opening of a new downtown casino, according to a prosecution affidavit.

The five had been associated with Occupy Cleveland, but organizers of the movement have tried to distance the group from the men. They say the five didn’t represent it or its nonviolent philosophy.

Yeah right, the Occupy Movement’s nonviolent philosophy. CYA much? You think we’ve forgotten the Occu-Mess already? The beatings, rapes, robberies, public defecations ... the desire for anarchy. And now their anarchists have been caught. And if this Loserama bunch of pond scum rejects had got their hands on real explosives, or found somebody with the smarts to create his own, we’d be out at least one nice bridge by now. Maybe two, depending on the size of the blast and the collapse. And I’m not buying the “we didn’t mean or intend to hurt anybody.” Bullshit. The bridge is used by thousands of people every day. No matter when they pushed their detonate button, there was likely someone on the bridge. Had their bomb been real and gone off, that would have been murder.

Life in prison is too good for this crew. Hang ‘em.

[ Back in May 2012: ] CLEVELAND (AP) - After unknowingly working with an FBI informant for months, five men have been charged with plotting to bomb an Ohio bridge linking two wealthy Cleveland suburbs.

Federal authorities Tuesday described the men as anarchists who are angry with corporate America and the government. They say the alleged plotters researched explosives and obtained what they thought was C-4 explosives. The material, in fact, was harmless and the public was never at risk because the men got it from the informant, officials said.

Their arrests Monday night marked the latest case in which FBI agents planned fake terrorism plots alongside targeted suspects, an indication it continues to be a top strategy for the government in preventing terrorism.

“They talked about making a statement against corporate America and the government as some of the motivations for their actions,” U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said in announcing the arrests with the head of the FBI in Cleveland, Stephen Anthony.

Court documents detail several conversations the FBI secretly recorded in which its informant discussed the bomb plans with some of the suspects.

In one, Brandon L. Baxter, 20, of Lakewood, allegedly said “Taking out a bridge in the business district would cost the ... corporate big wigs a lot of money” because it would cause structural damage and prevent people from going to work.

He and another suspect, Douglas L. Wright, 26, of Indianapolis, favored targeting a bridge because it would limit “the number of casualties and the potential for killing possible supporters,” court documents said.

I know what you’re thinking, and I have the answers you want ...

Posted by Drew458     on 07/26/2012 at 09:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Bridges • Terrorists •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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