Jordanian teenager accused of bomb plot in U.S. pleads not guilty

A Jordanian teenager accused of two accounts of plotting to bomb a skyscraper in the U.S. state of Texas with what he thought was a car bomb pleaded not guilty Monday in a U.S. federal court.

Hosam Maher Smadi, 19, told the judge he was not guilty on both counts, one of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of bombing of a place of public use.

Smadi, who was in the U.S. illegally after he overstayed a visitor's visa, was arrested on Sept. 24 after he allegedly tried to set off a fake bomb provided by FBI agents. He was accused of parking a car underneath a 60-story skyscraper in Dallas, Texas, which he believed was filled with explosives and trying to detonate the bomb from several blocks away.

But the device Smadi used was actually a decoy provided by FBI agents posing as al-Qaida operatives. The FBI said it had been keeping taps on him after discovering him on an extremist Web site earlier this year. Smadi allegedly told undercover agents that he would have preferred to bomb the building on Sept. 11 but decided waited until the end of Ramadan.

Defense attorneys also questioned his younger brother, Husein Smadi, in California last week after a judge ordered that he be held as a witness in the case. Husein Smadi was arrested for possession of methamphatemine and taken into custody on the same day his brother was arrested in Dallas.

If convicted, Hosam Smadi could face a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Source: Xinhua