Plot foiled in Cleveland ahead of July 4
i24NEWS ·
Live from New York on i24NEWS's Le Grand Live, after the announcement of a "foiled attack in Cleveland, Ohio." The FBI's counterterrorism task force arrested a 48-year-old American citizen, Demetrius Pitts, who according to the authorities had three targets, two of them in downtown Cleveland on July 4, the national holiday. After weeks of surveillance, followed through an undercover FBI agent who posed as a brother in arms, Pitts planned, in his own words, to kill Americans, particularly soldiers and their families: he wanted to give the children of soldiers at the Cleveland Coast Guard station remote-controlled cars packed with explosives, and to park a van full of explosives along the July 4 parade. Several alerts had been raised about him in 2015 and 2017, and since May the joint terrorism task force had placed this undercover agent at his side, "a decision that proved decisive." For the FBI, the jihadist nature of his intentions is beyond doubt: Pitts said he wanted to act in the name of Al-Qaeda, and two videos were found on his phone, one in which he pledges allegiance to the organization. He was also considering another attack in Philadelphia, where he is from, and apparently radicalized on American soil. No explosives were found: a preventive arrest, but above all a show of force by the American authorities, sheriffs, Coast Guard, state police, local and federal police, at a press conference announced with great fanfare by Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, coordinated with the White House two days before the festivities: "a way of showing who is in charge and of reassuring the public." Correspondence by David Benaym on i24NEWS in French, July 2, 2018.