SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Federal agents are
investigating race as a possible motive behind an
abandoned backpack containing a functional
bomb after it was left along the downtown route
of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.
"The confluence of the holiday, the march and the
device is inescapable, but we are not at the point
where we can draw any particular motive," said
Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the
Spokane FBI office.
The suspicious backpack was spotted by three
city employees about an hour before the parade
was to start Monday, Harrill said. They saw wires
and immediately alerted law enforcement, who
disabled it without incident, he said.
The discovery before the parade for the slain civil
rights leader raised the possibility of a racial
motive in a region that has been home to the
white supremacist Aryan Nations.
Spokane Mayor Mary Verner said the attempted
bombing was unacceptable.
"I was struck that on a day when we celebrate
Dr. King, a champion of non-violence, we were
faced with a significant violent threat," Verner
said. "This is unacceptable in our community, or
any community."
The Spokane region and adjacent northern Idaho
have had numerous incidents of anti-government
and white supremacist activity during the past
three decades.
The most visible was by the Aryan Nations,
whose leader Richard Butler gathered racists and
anti-Semites at his compound for two decades.
Butler was bankrupted and lost the compound in
a civil lawsuit in 2000 and died in 2004.
In December, a man in Hayden, Idaho, built a
snowman on his front lawn shaped like a
member of the Ku Klux Klan holding a noose. The
man knocked the pointy-headed snowman down
after getting a visit from sheriff's deputies.
Harrill decried the planting of the bomb as an act
of domestic terrorism that was clearly designed
to advance a political or social agenda.
"The potential for injury and death were clearly
present," he said of the bomb.
The FBI received no warnings in advance and did
not have a suspect, Harrill said. No one has
claimed responsibility for planting the bomb.
The federal agency has offered a $20,000 reward
for information leading to an arrest and
conviction in the case.
Source: Http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-01-19-mlk-parade-bomb-spokane_N.htm
investigating race as a possible motive behind an
abandoned backpack containing a functional
bomb after it was left along the downtown route
of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.
"The confluence of the holiday, the march and the
device is inescapable, but we are not at the point
where we can draw any particular motive," said
Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the
Spokane FBI office.
The suspicious backpack was spotted by three
city employees about an hour before the parade
was to start Monday, Harrill said. They saw wires
and immediately alerted law enforcement, who
disabled it without incident, he said.
The discovery before the parade for the slain civil
rights leader raised the possibility of a racial
motive in a region that has been home to the
white supremacist Aryan Nations.
Spokane Mayor Mary Verner said the attempted
bombing was unacceptable.
"I was struck that on a day when we celebrate
Dr. King, a champion of non-violence, we were
faced with a significant violent threat," Verner
said. "This is unacceptable in our community, or
any community."
The Spokane region and adjacent northern Idaho
have had numerous incidents of anti-government
and white supremacist activity during the past
three decades.
The most visible was by the Aryan Nations,
whose leader Richard Butler gathered racists and
anti-Semites at his compound for two decades.
Butler was bankrupted and lost the compound in
a civil lawsuit in 2000 and died in 2004.
In December, a man in Hayden, Idaho, built a
snowman on his front lawn shaped like a
member of the Ku Klux Klan holding a noose. The
man knocked the pointy-headed snowman down
after getting a visit from sheriff's deputies.
Harrill decried the planting of the bomb as an act
of domestic terrorism that was clearly designed
to advance a political or social agenda.
"The potential for injury and death were clearly
present," he said of the bomb.
The FBI received no warnings in advance and did
not have a suspect, Harrill said. No one has
claimed responsibility for planting the bomb.
The federal agency has offered a $20,000 reward
for information leading to an arrest and
conviction in the case.
Source: Http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-01-19-mlk-parade-bomb-spokane_N.htm
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