Man Injured Handling Explosive Device, Possibly TATP

UPDATE:Benjiman Kuzelka is reportedly in serious condition and will be arrested when he recuperates. His brother, Grey Timothy Kuzelka, 21, was arrested and booked into the county jail. He had been free on bail since Sunday, following an arrest on suspicion of drug possession, sales and transport.
Their mother, Rebecca Kuzelka, 55, was also arrested.

More Details & Suspects Photos

Fox news is reporting that a Southern California man is being investigated after severely injuring his hand while handling an explosive device, possibly while attempting to make TATP.

TATP may have been at the center of an alleged New York City bomb plot targeting subways and trains and also is That is the same type of explosive used in a London subway bombing.

via Source.

From The LA Times

Federal and Riverside County authorities are investigating an explosion overnight at a Lake Elsinore home in which highly powerful explosives were used, according to a law enforcement source.

The blast occurred late Wednesday night at a home in the 30500 block of Audelo that was sometimes used for a day-care operation. A man in the home was seriously injuried, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Riverside County sheriff’s detectives, FBI investigators and bomb technicians and agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are taking part in the investigation.

The source said investigators were trying to determine if the explosive found at the home was similar to acetone peroxide, or TATP, the powerful explosive used in the 2007 London subway terrorist bombings. But there is no evidence at this time that the Lake Elsinore case in related to terrorism.

[Updated at Noon: Authorities detonated some of the explosives found in the house this morning. That blast was heard around the neighborhood.

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California Terror Informant Faces Deportation

He’s a Pakistani immigrant who helped the United States in the war on terror, but now the U.S. government wants to deport him. His lawyers are working furiously to try to allow him to stay in his adopted country.

The man, who wants to remain unidentified, said he put himself in harm’s way by working as an undercover informant in California for ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, searching out terrorist connections.

He said ICE agents told him if he worked for ICE, he could stay here indefinitely or even get a green card.

The former informant is originally from Karachi, Pakistan and has lived in the US for over 20 years, first as a student and then as a white-collar professional. But now he faces deportation back to Pakistan.

“I thought I had a chance to live here without being deported or you know that’s what they told me, (ICE agents) said if I work with them as an informant I will be able to stay in this country indefinitely,” he said.

ICE agents approached him in 2004 after he was charged with overstaying his legal visa and suggested there was another way to stay in the United States.

“They told me if I helped them they would get me a green card, but later on they changed their statement and they said I can stay in the United States indefinitely, you know,” the informant said in describing those events.

In exchange, the agents wanted him to work as a confidential informant, to help crack the case of a Fresno paralegal named Akram Sabar Chaudhry, who the agents said was filing false asylum claims for immigrants.

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Suspicious Packages Found Near California State Capitol

A loud boom echoed from a grassy area in front of the state Capitol just after noon today as California Highway Patrol officers apparently blew up a suspicious package found nearby.

Two packages were found on a statue near the north end of the Capitol and were x-rayed by a hazardous materials team, according to Jarrod Lassila, a California Highway Patrol spokesman.

One of the packages, a paper bag, was found to contain clothes. The other had a piece of metal sticking out of it, so officers moved it to a grassy area and conducted what Lassila said was a “controlled disruption.”

Lassila said the bag did not contain explosives or hazardous materials. He said investigators are not releasing details on the disruption method they used or on the contents of the second package.

Some areas of the Capitol were evacuated during the operation.

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Suspected Sabotage Causes Massive Phone Outage

Santa Clara County officials have declared a local emergency after they said someone intentionally cut an underground fiber optic cable in south San Jose, causing a widespread phone service outage in southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties today that included disruption to 911 emergency phone service.

John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T, said it appears somebody opened a manhole in South San Jose, climbed down eight to 10 feet and cut four or five fiber-optic cables.Britton also said there was a report of underground cables being cut in San Carlos.

AT&T is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for the sabotage, Britton said.

The outage initially affected some cell phones, Internet access and about 52,200 Verizon household land lines in Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Santa Cruz County, according to the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Services. The cell phone networks affected are Verizon, Nextel, Sprint and some AT&T.

Verizon is the sole provider of land lines in the South County area.

“We’ve never to this extent in recent history had this kind of phone outage,” said Gilroy police Sgt. Jim Gillio.

ATMs in South Santa Clara County were not working.

Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy cancelled all elective surgeries in response to the emergency, according to county officials.

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Backpack With 7 Pipe Bombs Leads To Evacuations

Santee California - A man who found seven pipe bombs in a backpack turned them in to the Sheriff’s Department substation Monday afternoon, prompting authorities to evacuate nearby businesses as they neutralized the explosive devices.

The man entered the station on Cuyamaca Street, near Buena Vista Avenue, around 2:15 p.m. and left the backpack in the lobby, Lt. Mike Munsey said. The man said he found the bag with the bombs the night before and one of them was leaking.

The sheriff’s bomb-arson unit inspected the backpack and neutralized each bomb individually, Munsey said.

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Drug Cartels New Weapons Pushes Mexico Towards Edge

It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city’s police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico’s drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.

“There is an arms race between the cartels,” said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.

“One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them.”

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Animal Rights Activists Arrested For Terrorst Acts Against UC Scientists

Federal authorities have arrested four suspected animal rights activists in connection with violent protests in Santa Cruz and Alameda County, police reported Friday.

Three of the four were linked to the Riverside Avenue home police raided after the home invasion attack of a UC Santa Cruz researcher a year ago, according to Santa Cruz police spokesman Zach Friend.

Nathan Pope, 26, of Oceanside and Adriana Stumpo, 23, of Long Beach were arrested by the FBI and the Charlotte Joint Terrorism Task Force at an airport in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday when they returned to the U.S. from Costa Rica, police reported. They appeared in federal court in Charlotte on Friday.

The two other suspects – Joseph Buddenberg, 25, of Berkeley and Maryam Khejavi, 20, of Pinole – were arrested by the FBI, the San Francisco Joint Terrorism Task Force and UC Berkeley police Friday afternoon. Khejavi was arrested in Oakland and Buddenberg, the only one of the four not tied to the Riverside Avenue house, was arrested at the Alameda County Courthouse, according to authorities.

Santa Cruz Police Chief Howard Skerry said the arrests came “due to the tenacity of investigators,” but declined to speak specifically about the probe, evidence collected or any future arrests. Santa Cruz police were involved in the investigation, but the FBI was the lead law enforcement agency handling the case.

Still, he said he was pleased with the progress made in the past year.

“A lot of cases are very complex,” Skerry said. “We don’t give up on the cases. If it takes years, it takes years.”

Pope, Stumpo, Buddenberg and Khejavi will be charged at least in part under the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, police said. The act carries a penalty of up to five years for each violation. It wasn’t immediately clear how many counts the suspected animal activists face. They are expected to appear in U.S. District Court later this month.

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Explosive Device Goes Off In California Prison

An improvised explosive device went off inside a federal prison in California during a search Saturday, according to federal authorities.

No one was injured, the authorities told CNN.

The incident happened in the recreation area of the Victorville Federal Penitentiary. Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Traci Billingsley said the device was found by a staff member during a “routine search of inmate property”. She said it “detonated upon discovery.”

A bomb squad from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and FBI bomb technicians were called to the prison to examine the device and make sure it didn’t pose any further danger. They remained inside the prison as of 9:30 p.m.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said an investigation was under way. She said the incident is not terrorism-related.

Billingsley said the prison was locked down at the time the device was found. She could not say what prompted the lockdown, or if there was any connection to the search. No inmates were in the area when the explosion occurred.

“The prison remains secure,” she said.

She said she could not recall a previous incident where an improvised explosive device was found inside a prison.

via Explosive goes off in California prison – CNN.com.

FBI Sending Suspicious Powder To Headquarters

A suspicious substance mailed to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is on its way to FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., for further testing.

FBI agents in Salt Lake City said they received a final report from the state health department on the white powdery substance in an envelope mailed to Temple Square last week. Tests were conducted to ensure it wasn’t ricin, anthrax or any other biological weapon.

“It is not any kind of biological agent or toxin or even a new strain,” FBI Special Agent Juan Becerra said Monday.

Envelopes with white powder were mailed to Temple Square, the LDS Church’s temple in Los Angeles, and a printing press belonging to the Catholic-affiliated Knights of Columbus in New Haven, Conn. Both churches were heavy backers of California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage in that state.

The FBI has labeled its probe a domestic terrorism investigation. Becerra would not say whether the agency had identified any suspects in the case, but reiterated Monday that the FBI had no evidence that linked the threats to Prop. 8 or its opponents.

Many gay rights organizations have also decried the threats.

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