Adel Daoud, 18, is charged with plotting to bomb a downtown bar. (Credit: CBS)
Reporting Steve Miller
CHICAGO (CBS) — The defense attorney for the 18-year-old boy from Hillside accused of trying to set off what he thought was a car bomb downtown says the government’s case is suspicious.
Meanwhile, father of the suspect, Adel Daoud, called his son “an innocent baby” – and held back tears as the young man appeared in U.S. District Court Monday.
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As WBBM Newsradio’s Steve Miller reports, attorney Tom Durkin calls the complaint against Daoud “fishy.”
“This is not the first case of this nature I’ve had,” Durkin said. “I’ve had several of them. I was involved in a 9-11 case in Guantanamo. I know terrorism cases. This doesn’t smell like a terrorism case. It smells like there’s something wrong with this case.”
Durkin was asked if he meant Daoud was entrapped, to which he replied: “No, don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I’ve had 18-year-olds in my house before and they’re pretty impressionable,” he continued. “Is this the case? I don’t know. But I’m suspicious.”
He said if the government is to be believed, it sounds like Daoud was on the Internet talking nonsense.
“Does that mean that he has radical Islamic beliefs? I don’t know. I know when my kids were 18 might have said some stupid stuff,” Durkin said.
Meanwhile, Daoud’s father called his accused son “the best in the family, and “an innocent baby,” moments before the teenage son he was talking about was led into court wearing an orange jumpsuit, with his hair in a long Afro style.
Daoud was arrested after an undercover operation in which federal prosecutors say he developed attack plans, searched for a target and checked it out.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Daoud was closely monitored by undercover officers throughout the operation, and was offered several opportunities to change his mind and walk away from the supposed attack.
But he did not, and the undercover agents supplied the harmless dud explosives he allegedly attempted to detonate, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
He justified killing civilians on the grounds that “you can’t really take these people as regular people. They’re like, more like robots” because they are “for the war on terrorism,” prosecutors said.
In choosing a bar as his target, he said a bar would have the largest number of people inside at night, and he could set up the explosives under cover of darkness, prosecutors said.
He also said such an attack “won’t kill any Muslims for sure . . . [a]nd if you do it’s their fault,” prosecutors said. Drinking alcohol is not permitted for observant Muslims.
The federal complaint against Daoud did not specify the bar that he targeted. But Mike Fierstein, whose family owns Cal’s Bar and Liquors at 400 S. Wells St., told the Sun-Times Media Wire he is convinced that his bar was the target.
