The Jordanian teenager accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper built a life so typically American that friends and acquaintances are still struggling to understand how he could have plotted a terror attack.
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, attended a California high school, had his own apartment, was a reliable worker and even got married during his two years in the United States.
But next week he will return to Dallas federal court to hear the government explain why he should be prosecuted for trying to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Undercover FBI agents said Smadi had left what he believed to be a bomb in an SUV in the building's underground garage Thursday, then drove a short distance away and dialed a cellphone, thinking it would remotely detonate the explosive. He is now being held at a federal detention center in Seagoville.
On Tuesday, more details emerged about Smadi's life before he was arrested near the 60-story Fountain Place building in downtown Dallas.
Smadi entered the country legally, on a temporary visitor's visa, in 2007, but remained after it expired, said Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He left California in early 2008 and ended up in the Ellis County town of Italy, about 45 miles south of Dallas.
About four months after arriving, he married a local woman, Rosalinda Duron, court records show.
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