Historica Wiki
Advertisement
John T. Booker, Jr.

John T. Booker, Jr. (born 1995) was a citizen of the United States who attempted to join the Islamic State in 2015 and bomb Fort Riley. However, he was arrested by the FBI.

Biography[]

John T. Booker, Jr. was an African-American from the city of Topeka, Kansas, in the United States. Booker converted to Islam and sought to join the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, which was engaging the United States and other Western countries in a religious war. He was said to have had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia by the local Topeka imam Omar Hazim, who helped him to obtain the medicine perscribed to him to treat his illnesses. On 8 October 2014, the FBI set up a sting operation where they introduced a man claiming to also be a wannabe terrorist to Booker. The man told him that IS did not accept anyone, and that he would need to prove himself. Booker said that if IS leaders told him to go to the White House, he said that he would go with them without any question. He also stated that he wanted to kill US military leaders with a small gun or a sword. Later, the FBI contact introduced him to a second FBI contact, claiming to be a high-ranking sheikh. The sheikh and the original contact gave him a map of Fort Riley, a US military base, and showed him how to detonate the bomb that they told him to use in the attack. On 15 March 2014 he posted on Facebook that he was going to wage jihad and hoped that he was going to die, and he told the FBI that he wanted to join the US Army and kill US soldiers. On 10 April, Booker was arrested along with 28-year-old Alexander J. Blair, charged with knowing about the planned attack but not alerting the authorities.

Advertisement