After convicted bomb plotter Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo complained he didn’t receive enough advance warning, today’s sentencing hearing was cancelled just moments before it was scheduled to begin. The hearing will instead be held Friday morning at 9 a.m. in a Waco federal court.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Walter Smith changed the sentencing from Friday to Thursday. Abdo, who will represent himself at the hearing, said today he needed more time to prepare and wasn’t adequately informed of the change in schedule, court officials said.
A large group of media, onlookers and government officials had assembled at the federal courthouse in Waco for the sentencing hearing, in which Abdo faces life in prison.
In May, Abdo was convicted on six counts in connection with a plot to detonate a bomb inside a Chinese restaurant popular with Fort Hood soldiers and then shoot the survivors. Abdo was arrested with a bomb-making article from an Al Qaeda magazine and numerous bomb components in Killeen in July 2011 after a tip from a local gun store.
Abdo, who asked for permission to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers last month, has indicated in court filings that he will focus on child pornography charges brought against him by Army officials after he won a highly public battle for conscientious objector status based on his Muslim religion. Abdo went AWOL from the Fort Campbell Army post in Kentucky before his court-martial could begin and came to Texas to carry out his bomb plot, according to testimony in his trial.
Army legal officers dropped the child pornography charges against Abdo two months after he was arrested, saying they couldn’t prove that the images found on his government computer were of people under the age of 18. Abdo has said he believes the charges were brought against him in retaliation for his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan with his unit.