A Kansas man was arrested today after trying to take what he thought was a bomb onto the tarmac of Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.
Terry Lee Loewen, a 58-year-old avionics technician from Wichita, planned to use his access card to conduct a suicide bombing at the airport, government officials said.
There was no danger to the public because the supposed explosives were inert and the man was accompanied by an undercover FBI employee, government officials said.
Mr Loewen had been under investigation by the FBI since earlier this year, prosecutors said in papers filed in federal court in Wichita.
Mr Loewen was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against people and property, attempting to use an explosive to destroy property, and trying to provide material support to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
No additional arrests are expected, federal officials said. Mr Loewen would face as much as life in prison if convicted.
"Lone wolves -- home grown violent extremists -- remain a very serious threat to our nation's security," Michael Kaste, the FBI agent in charge of the Wichita bureau, said in a statement.
‘Homicidal maniac’
The complaint said Mr Loewen left a letter dated December 11th that said, “By the time you read this I will -- if everything went as planned -- have been martyred in the path of Allah.”
It said he added, “I expect to be called a terrorist (which I am), a psychopath and a homicidal maniac.”
Federal officials said Mr Loewen spent months preparing for an attack and communicating over the Internet with a person he didn’t realise was an FBI employee.
In September, he sent an e-mail apologising to the FBI employee for allowing a relative to try to fix a problem with his computer and said the relative didn’t see any of their conversations, the complaint said.
Mr Loewen’s airport access badge had been disabled before today’s attempt, and he was arrested after he twice tried to open the gate, said the criminal complaint.
The single-terminal airport with 11 gates is the largest in Kansas, according to the facility’s website.
Bloomberg