During the next couple of months, Abdo, who was based at Fort Campbell, Ky., with the 101st Airborne Division, continued to phone and e-mail Klawonn and insisted that he wanted to go to Fort Hood, where Klawonn was based.
Klawonn brushed him off and eventually stopped taking his calls, in part because he didn’t want someone so vocally antimilitary around a base still trying to recover from the shooting rampage of Major Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who faces capital murder charges in the deaths of 13 people.
When Klawonn spoke of Hasan as an “atrocious killer,’’ Abdo seemed to demur, saying the major might have been forced into a corner.
“We just never felt good about him,’’ said Michael Weinstein, the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who also spoke to Abdo.
Abdo, 21, was charged yesterday in US District Court in Waco, Texas, with possession of an unregistered destructive device in a bomb plot. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
When the judge entered the courtroom, Abdo refused to stand, according to the Associated Press. At the end of the proceeding, as Abdo was led out of the courtroom, he shouted, “Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood 2009’’ and called out the name of an Iraqi girl who was raped and murdered in 2006 by US soldiers.
Abdo was arrested Wednesday in Killeen, Texas, and authorities said they discovered bomb-making materials in his backpack and in a motel room, as well as a copy of an article from the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire, produced by the terrorist group’s Yemen affiliate.
Abdo was discharged from the Army in May, on the same day that military authorities charged him with possession of child pornography, an allegation that his lawyer said he has denied.
Abdo’s father, Jamal, was deported to Jordan in February 2010 after being convicted of soliciting sex online from a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl called “Molly,’’ according to court records cited by the Dallas Morning News.
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