Oklahoma Suicide Bombing: Sorting Through the Evidence

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I posted a couple of times last week (original post here; update here) about Joel Hinrichs III, who died on October 1 after detonating an explosive device while sitting on a bench about 100 yards from a stadium that was packed for an Oklahoma University-Kansas State football game.  The fact that Hinrichs chose to kill himself using explosives is in itself noteworthy; this case is even more noteworthy for the fact that Hinrichs attempted to purchase ammonium nitrate just a few days before his death.  There have been a host of other reports in the Oklahoma media (including reports that Hinrichs attempted to enter the football stadium, and that he attended the same Norman, Oklahoma mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui) that, if true, would be significant.

I noted in my first blog entry on the subject that "many of the reported facts are based on fairly sketchy sourcing."  Local media reports have been particularly opaque, as much of the information in them has been attributed simply to "sources" -- leaving us no idea of the veracity of these sources, nor of the evidence on which they base their conclusions.  Thus, I thought it would be helpful for me to sort through the evidence and distinguish between what we know and what we don't know.  First, what we do know:

• Hinrichs died after detonating an explosive while sitting about 100 yards from a packed football stadium.  This fact alone makes the case noteworthy.  (We don't know, however, if he meant for the bomb to detonate when it did.)
• Hinrichs tried to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before blowing himself up.  The evidence for this is solid.  Norman police have confirmed that an off-duty police officer was in the feed store where Hinrichs tried to buy ammonium nitrate.  Because Hinrichs seemed suspicious, the officer followed him to the parking lot, got his car's tag number, and phoned the tag number to Norman police.
• Hinrichs had a Pakistani roommate who was briefly detained after Hinrichs's death, but subsequently released.
• The warrant used to execute a search of Hinrichs's apartment was subsequently sealed.

Now, what we don't know:

• We don't know whether Hinrichs attended the same mosque as Moussaoui.  While this was reported in the local press, the information is attributed to "sources."  The president of Oklahoma University's Muslim Student Association has said that he believes Hinrichs was neither Muslim nor someone who frequented mosques.  Who to believe?  Unclear.
• We don't know whether Hinrichs attempted to enter the football stadium before he died.  The source for this is a student who claims that a security guard told him that someone wearing a backpack had tried to enter the stadium but sprinted away when the guard tried to search his bag.  The guard hasn't been interviewed by the local media, nor has anybody been able to definitively say that the person who ran away was Hinrichs.
• We don't know if the bomb that killed Hinrichs was made with TATP.  While this has been widely reported, the information again comes from unnamed sources.  The FBI has refused to confirm or deny these reports.
• We don't know whether Hinrichs's roommate had a plane ticket to Algeria, as was reported in the local media -- nor has the local media specified whether this was supposedly a one-way ticket.

People have offered a range of conclusions in this case, and various bloggers are confidently declaring this to be an act of Islamic terror.  The bottom line, though, is that we're best served by careful analysis of the facts.  Sensationalistic reporting and jumping to unwarranted conclusions helps nobody.  This is obviously a fascinating case; I have good sources in Oklahoma and will continue to follow the story on this blog as it further develops.  But we must be careful to distinguish what we know from what we do not know.

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