Driver applicant charged with threat to kill president
Posted on Thursday, April 20, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/152327/
FORT SMITH — An Afghanistan native who applied for a job at a Van Buren trucking firm said he planned to use one of the company’s trucks to assassinate President Bush, according to federal court documents.
Ahmad Dost, 34, of Dallas went before U. S. Magistrate Beverly Stites Jones on Wednesday. He is charged with threatening to kill the president, a felony. He did not enter a plea.
During the three-minute court proceeding in Fort Smith, Jones granted a motion by Dost’s court-appointed attorney Jack Schisler to have Dost undergo a mental evaluation.
Dost was turned over to the U. S. Marshals Service to be sent for an evaluation, court records show. No date was set for the evaluation. The results will be submitted to Jones.
Dost has permanent resident status in the United States, said Schisler, who would not comment Wednesday on why he asked for the mental evaluation.
An affidavit by Secret Service Special Agent Charles Briscoe said Dost had made threats against the president and other federal officials at least five other times in four different states beginning in May 2004.
“Upon being subsequently confronted by special agents with the U. S. Secret Service, or other law enforcement authorities, Dost confirmed his hatred of the United States, but denied making any actual threats,” Briscoe wrote in the affidavit.
Briscoe’s affidavit did not say whether Dost was arrested in the other cases.
Briscoe wrote that Dost told others last weekend that he and his friends were going to carry out the assassination by turning a tractor-trailer into a bomb, “or if unsuccessful with the assassination of the president, he would use the bomb to inflict mass casualties upon the public.”
Schisler said Wednesday he did not believe Dost’s claims of co-conspirators involved in the plot.
Briscoe’s affidavit said Dost was in western Arkansas attending an orientation after applying for a job at USA Truck in Van Buren.
On Saturday, Briscoe wrote, Dost made statements to four other applicants at a Fort Smith motel that, among other things, Bush had assassinated all of Afghanistan’s United Nations representatives, he handled the situation in Afghanistan poorly and he was a corrupt leader who didn’t deserve to live.
One applicant, identified as Thomas Brown, told the Secret Service that Dost said he and his people would assassinate President Bush and that Osama bin Laden would be president when he came out of hiding.
Bin Laden is the head of the terrorist organization al-Qaida that has been blamed for the attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. He has avoided capture and is believed to be hiding near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Briscoe interviewed Dost on Monday. His affidavit said Dost expressed extreme anger at the United States and Bush and said they ruined his native country. Dost referred to Bush as a gangster and criminal but said he did not threaten to kill him.