A terrorist sympathizer, a college dropout who idolized both American terrorist Timothy McVeigh and Islamic jihadists while learning the hard way how to build bombs, likely faces a lengthy prison sentence after confessing to two terrorism-related crimes.

Joseph Jeffrey Brice, 22, who nearly died when one of his eight-pound homemade bombs exploded in April 2010, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane to illegally making the device and later providing bomb-making instructions online to potential foreign terrorists.

The latter charge of providing material support to terrorists reached the attention of senior Justice Department officials because of its national security implications, according to U.S. Attorney Michael Ormsby, who declined further comment on the case.

Brice faces up to 15 years in prison when he’s sentenced on Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Lonny Suko.

Brice used the Internet to help foreign terrorists learn bomb-making techniques, knowing that such training would lead to the use, attempted use or threatened use of a weapon of mass destruction, Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell Smoot said in court filings.

The prosecutor described Brice as an intelligent young man with an “insatiable interest” in building and blowing up bombs, who used social media for discussions about using improvised explosive devices to bomb the U.S. Courthouse in Spokane or as diversions for bank robberies.

Brice also posted six YouTube “Strength of Allah” videos in 2010 and 2011, using an Al Qaeda in Iraq logo and “glorifying Jihad and the use of explosives,” and even continued those discussions after being contacted by FBI agents, the documents say.

All that came after Brice, who graduated from high school in Clarkston, Wash., nearly died on April 18, 2010, when the “apan” (acetone peroxide ammonium nitrate) bomb he built prematurely exploded when he lit the fuse and didn’t run away fast enough in eastern Washington’s rural Whitman County.

That occurred one day before the anniversary of the antigovernment terrorist act carried out by his role model, Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people with a truck bomb he detonated outside the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

The court documents say Brice not only emulated and claimed that he looked like McVeigh but also shared his antigovernment views and downloaded “The Turner Diaries,” a novel by William Pierce that was a blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing.

Then, the court documents say, Brice ordered one of his bomb-making components – tannerite – on the Internet. The chemical is unregulated and can be legally possessed as a shock-sensitive explosive detonated with firearms.

Brice used it to make a bomb that exploded with such force that it blew off his shirt and pants, broke bones, severely damaged and burned his legs, and left him unconscious for 12 days in a Seattle burn hospital. His girlfriend watched in amazement, uninjured, but wasn’t initially truthful with investigators, the documents say.

When Brice recovered four months later, a Whitman County sheriff’s deputy who investigated the blast decided not to recommend the filing of state charges because he believed, after a phone interview, that the young man “had learned his lesson the hard way.” Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives also initially concluded the explosion was caused by a malfunction with tannerite, even though Brice didn’t have a firearm with him to ignite the explosive, the court documents say.

However, the FBI’s Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force had received tips about Brice’s interest in bomb-building and those leads were actively pursued after, in an unrelated incident, an unexploded backpack bomb was found on Jan. 17, 2011, in Spokane along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.

The documents say Brice was ruled out as a suspect in the MLK bomb and had no known connection with Kevin W. Harpham, a neo-Nazi who ultimately confessed to building and planting that device. Harpham was sentenced to 37 years in prison.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s interest in Brice heightened when agents learned that the explosion that nearly killed him didn’t end his interest and promotion of bomb-building techniques. “Since his near-fatal incident,” court documents say, “Brice, a self-declared, conservative, right-wing Christian, appeared to undergo a rapid radicalization to Islam.”

As the investigation progressed, FBI agents reviewed Brice’s online activity and telephone records. He was arrested on May 9, 2011.

The investigation turned up thousands of documents, including videos – some encrypted – of everything from a “Times Square Bomb Test” to Chechen extremists destroying Russian military equipment to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers when Brice was 11.

When Brice was questioned by a terrorism task force agent in March 2011, two months after the Spokane bomb was discovered and safely defused, he confessed to building the destructive device that caused his injuries the previous year. The court documents also say he bragged about “his own expertise in explosives, destructive devices, weapons of mass destruction” and suicide bombs.

Even after being questioned by FBI agents and finding a GPS-tracking device that apparently had been secretly placed on his vehicle, Brice continued posting pro-jihad, anti-Western comments on public and private websites.

In early May 2011, using the screen name Yusuf90, Brice met a fellow jihadist named “Abu Harith” on the password-protected Deen Al Haq website. That introduction led to E-mail exchanges, and eventually Brice sent along detailed instructions for “open source” bomb-making, the documents say.

When he was arrested, Brice confessed to his involvement during a four-hour interview in which he learned that Abu Harith really was an undercover FBI agent.

Still, the documents say, Brice tried to laugh it all off:  “It’s going to look like I’m a fucking Muslim terrorist, but I was just fucking with these guys. I was just toying with them. I drink beer, I drink beer every day. I do. I do everything opposite of whatever it looks like. I was just fucking with them. There’s a guy, this is going to look so bad!”

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has accused a former managing director of Bank PHB, Mr Francis Atuche, of using depositors’ funds to pay N45 million in church tithes.

Lead prosecution counsel, Kemi Pinheiro, today made the accusation at the Lagos High Court, sitting in Ikeja, while leading in evidence a key witness, Mr Solomon Abolaji Ogunsola, a former staff of PHB Mortgages Limited. Atuche paid the money from an account of PHB Mortgage Limited.

Pinheiro presented documents in court, some of them e-mails sent as an order to release the sum of N35million to St. Monica Catholic church, Ibusa, Delta State, and another sum of N10million to another St. Augustine Catholic Church. Ogunsola told the court that Atuche sent the money to the two churches in Delta State because he hails from the state.

Ogunsola also admitted knowing two companies: Claremount Nigeria Limited and Claremount Asset Management. He said that Claremount Nigeria Limited had a call account with his bank and the account was owned by Atuche.

He explained that the only document on the call account’s file was a reference letter which bears Atuche’s name. The document was admitted as exhibit.

In addition, various transactions carried out by Atuche in his statements of account with Claremount Nigeria Limited and Claremount Asset Management Limited were read. Atuche had denied having anything to do with the two companies.

Justice Lateefa Okunnu admitted the accounts as exhibits.

The EFCC counsel also led in evidence, one Mr Andy Uzomor, another staff of PHB Mortgage Limited, who presented a 39-page document before the court as exhibit. The presentation of the document was opposed by lead defence counsel, Anthony Idigbe, who claimed that some of the documents had to do with a N20million transaction between his law chambers and Atuche. Idigbe urged the court not to admit the particular section as it will deny Atuche a right to a counsel of his choice. According to him, if the document was admitted either himself or his client will have to go into the witness box, which might force his chamber out of the case.

But Pinheiro insisted that Idigbe’s objections lacked substance in law. According to him, some of the documents pertained to an account that Atuche had disowned. Besides, he referred to Section 38, sub-section 1 of the EFCC Establishment Act which grants the EFCC power to seek and receive information from anybody. After listening to all their submissions, Justice Okunnu admitted the documents as exhibits and adjourned the case till October 4th, 2012.

By David Mugabe and Innocent Anguyo

Car dealers in gazetted bonds mainly owned by Pakistani nationals this morning closed their sales points in Kampala in protest to US-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

“No doing business, we want to carry out the one day protest in a peaceful way,” said Imran Ahmed, managing director of Gondal Motors at Coin internal car deport.

There were banners pinned on most of the gates of the car bonds on Jinja road including Coin and Jambo, Cosmos. Besides the words condemning the movie, there was also a symbolic picture of a bleeding hand spiked by arrows. Above the hand was an Arabic word said to mean Mohammed. The Pakistani car dealers said the hand symbolized their defence of the prophet under attack (arrows).

There are 15 bonds on the outskirts of the city centre. Imran said the entire 15 bonds sell about 100 cars daily some as re-exports to neighbouring Rwanda, eastern DRC and southern Sudan.

At various points, car dealers and middlemen who operated in car depots owned by Pakistanis were stranded at the gates as the depots were locked.

Salesmen however condemned the strike saying it derails their business and makes them lose customers to competitors.

“Their car bonds have remained closed and they have achieved their objective but we end up being the main losers. We have not made any sales today because our cars are locked inside, yet, we have to pay rent, school fees and even buy food,” said Joseph Kisasizi, the chairman of car salesmen at Coin Limited based in Nakawa.

Geoffrey Masikini from Arua who travelled to Kampala to buy a salon car was left stranded as he could not access and inspect the vehicle saying, “I had paid a deposit on the car and I was planning to complete the remaining money today so that I could drive back homw in it but now I have to spend another day before I can take it”.

Despite closure of business for the day, Simon Muhwana of Jambo Auto Mart in Kyambogo revealed that the Pakistanis still asked them to pay the daily car parking rent of about shs 10000.

The businessmen urge government to revoke the licenses of the depots that participated in the strike.

Zeeshan Arshad, from Jambo said the 5,000 Pakistani were asked to close their shops and businesses in protest.

“Today we join our fellow brothers and sisters around the world in condemning the blasphemous movie. We want the U.S and French Embassies in Uganda to come out and apologise for the movie. We also want action taken against the producer of the movie and the French cartoonist,” said Imran.

These included pharmacies, foreign exchange bureaus, sports equipment shops, hardware outlets and construction businesses. They however said they had not informed any local authorities on their planned actions.

The low-budget film “Innocence of Muslims” was reportedly produced by an Egyptian Coptic Christian.
Most of the protests have been in the Middle East and North Africa. But there were also incidences in Nigeria. The crudely-made film has stirred outrage across the Islamic world, with protests reported in more than 20 countries and over 50 people killed in attacks or demonstrations.

A Swiss court has convicted three engineers for their roles in a Pakistani-led ring that smuggled nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. In a plea-bargain, they avoided exposure on later roles as CIA informants.

The Federal Court of Justice in Bellinzona found the Swiss Friedrich Tinner, 75, and his two sons – Urs, 46, and Marco, 43 – guilty of supplying technology and expertise to Muammar Gaddafi’s nuclear weapons programme until 2003. Only then, and under international pressure, did Libya give up its atomic pursuits.

The court handed the elder Friedrich a two-year suspended sentence; Urs got 50 months, and Marco 41. They have to pay fines and legal costs, but were free to leave the courtroom because they had served time in custody. The sons were arrested in 2004 and 2005.

The US had lobbied Switzerland not to indict the Tinners and to destroy sensitive evidence. A US probe had helped bring an end to the international smuggling network of the Pakistani engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atom bomb.

The case began in the 1990s, when the Tinners started working with Kahn’s network to supply Libya.

Khan remains under house arrest in Pakistan and has escaped prosecution. Other engineers in the so-called Khan network operated in Turkey, Britain, Spain, Dubai and South Africa.

The Tinner trio had refused to shed light on their cooperation with the CIA as the hearing began.

When asked why he had not informed Swiss authorities of his informant work, the father said the matter had been “in good hands” with his US counterparts.

The court did find the Tinners guilty, however, of supplying equipment and know-how and manufacturing centrifuges in Malaysia, resulting in the fines.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear policy expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who has been following the case, told the German news agency DPA that the “Tinners were absolutely central to the Khan network.”