Feds: Man well on his way to becoming terrorist before sting
A man accused of plotting a suicide bomb attack at a Kansas airport was "well on his way" to becoming a violent terrorist before authorities began investigating him, federal prosecutors argued Monday.
Terry Loewen, a former avionics technician, was arrested in December 2013 after authorities said he tried to bring a van filled with inert explosives onto the tarmac at Mid-Continent Airport in Wichita. His arrest capped a sting operation in which undercover FBI agents posed as co-conspirators and gave him the fake explosives. In a court filing, the government seeks to counter defense claims that an undercover FBI agent radicalized Loewen and induced him to commit the crime. The heavily redacted public version of the document was devoid of most of the facts behind the case supporting the prosecution's arguments.
