More than two years after his arrest for attempting to bomb a square in Portland where thousands were gathering for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s trial opened last week.

Here is my report on the 2010 arrest.

The latest news on the former refugee’s trial that began Friday is here (Reuters at the Baltimore Sun of all places).   The defense will probably argue that the vulnerable “youth” was entrapped.

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan 11 (Reuters) – A jury was empanelled on
Friday to hear the trial of a Somali-born man charged with
trying to blow up a crowd of people at a Christmas tree-lighting
ceremony in Oregon two years ago with a fake bomb supplied by
undercover agents posing as militant Islamists.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was 19
when he was arrested, faces life in prison on a single charge of
attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a plot to blow
up the 2010 festivities at a public plaza in downtown Portland.

An FBI affidavit filed in the case said Mohamud was taken
into custody after he attempted to use a cell phone to trigger
what he believed was a car bomb but was actually a fake device
supplied by agents posing as operatives for Islamic extremists.

[…..]

Mohamud has pleaded not guilty and defense attorneys are
expected to mount an entrapment defense, arguing that the former
Oregon State University student would never had committed such
an act without the FBI’s grooming and urging.

You can bet CAIR is watching the case!   Crocodile tears for “genuine plots” that go undetected.

The Muslim community has been watching the case closely.

“We’re concerned about genuine plots to harm Americans and
we hope each and every one of them is foiled,” said Ibrahim
Hooper, national communications director for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.

“But we are also concerned that they are focusing so many
resources on people who would never have committed a crime, that
they are diverting resources to foil actual lone wolf plots,” he
added.

You might also want to see the New York Times story on the trial and the suggestion that the liberal climate in Portland would produce a jury that might very well fall for the entrapment argument.

For new readers we have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.