Kansas man charged with US army base suicide plot

US federal prosecutors have charged a 20-year-old man in the state of Kansas with planning a suicide bomb attack against Fort Riley army base in an alleged plot to support the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

John T Booker of Topeka was charged on Friday with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempting to damage property by means of an explosive and attempting to provide material support to the “terrorist” group.

Booker was arrested earlier on Friday near the Kansas city of Manhattan “as he made his final preparations for his planned assault” on nearby Fort Riley, the US Attorney for Kansas, Barry Grissom, said.

An FBI agent said there was no breach at the military base.

“Unbeknownst to him, the materials that were used to make up this bomb were inert,” said Grissom, who added that Booker would appear on Friday in US Federal Court.

“It is alleged that he planned to pull the trigger of the explosives himself so that he would die in the explosion,” Grissom said.

“It is alleged that he told another individual that detonating a suicide bomb was his number one aspiration.”

Booker, from the Kansas city of Topeka, was questioned by FBI agents a year ago over his “jihad sympathies,” according to a report in the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper at the time.