RAW STORY– A Somali-born, American teenager was apparently set up by federal law enforcement officials who posed as radical Islamic fighters and lured the young man into a plot he believed would lead him to detonate a car bomb at an Oregon Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

The bomb, provided by FBI agents, was “inert” and did not pose a threat to public safety, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Oregon.

Oddly enough, Arthur Balizan, an FBI agent in Oregon, contradicted the US Attorney’s Office, suggesting that the threat posed by 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud “was very real.”

Except: “[At] every turn,” he explained, “we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack.”

The story rings devastatingly familiar when stacked next to the tale of Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a Jordanian man arrested in 2009, at age 19, for allegedly planning to detonate a car bomb in a Dallas skyscraper.

Each boy was led down the path to imagined violence by federal agents, with authorities ultimately providing fake bombs in both cases. Smadi and Mohamud, officials claim, expressed a desire to engage in terrorist attacks before agents began luring them in.

Continue reading about the FBI setting up the teen blamed for the fake car bomb here.

Photograph by Flickr user dnewman8