Georgia 'patriot' planted explosives and Quran

ATLANTA — Federal agents confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that they arrested a suspect they say left a backpack containing partially-made bombs in a local park.

Michael Sibley, 67, now faces federal charges of attempting to damage federal property by use of an explosive device.

Channel 2 Action News was there on Nov. 4 as agents scoured Vickery Park after a hiker found the backpack.

Agents said Sibley wanted to make a point that bombings could happen anywhere, that fell short.

"It's scary. You just got to be lucky," neighbor Bob Schlesinger said.

Channel 2 investigative reporter Aaron Diamant found nearby residents of an upscale East Cobb community who said it is unnerving to hear the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested their neighbor.

“I know the guy. I mean, I let the guy in my house,” Schlesinger told Diamant.

According to the criminal complaint, Sibley confessed and:

"Stated he is a 'patriot' and he felt no one was paying attention to what was going on the world.  Sibley  felt  if he  placed  the  package in a Roswell park  then  people would finally get  that  this  type  of activity could  happen anywhere."

Agents say they also found a copy of the Quran in the backpack and other items pointing to what Sibley called "soft targets," like the location of Atlanta’s Jewish community center.

According to court documents, Sibley confessed to agents that he bought a backpack at a garage sale and built a bomb inside his garage. Sibley also told agents that he purchased a T-shirt at a garage sale and wrote the name “Mina Khodari” on the shirt “because it looked foreign.”

risingsun wrote:Exactly what I was thinking!

March 21 (Reuters) - The machete-wielding man who was shot by police when he attacked security agents at a New Orleans airport on Friday has died in hospital, police said on Saturday.

Richard White, 63, was carrying six homemade explosives when he attacked agents at the airport with wasp killer spray and a machete. He had a history of mental illness, officials said.

"No one at this point in time has any notion of what triggered this behavior," Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said at a news conference earlier on Saturday.

"His family has been very cooperative. We have been able to determine that there is a mental illness component here."

White died after the news conference, at around 4 p.m. local time (2100 GMT), police said.

White sprayed the Transportation Security Administration agents at about 8 p.m. on Friday at a security checkpoint at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

A TSA agent threw a bag at White and slowed him down. White then brandished a machete and chased an unarmed TSA agent, until he was shot three times by a sheriff's officer.

During the attack White dropped a bag containing a lighter and six glass jars with cloth wicks in gasoline, commonly known as a molotov cocktails, Normand said.