Two men were arrested in Utah for planting a bomb under a news van that was covering the Charlie Kirk assassination.

 

The neighborhood where the suspects were arrested in was evacuated due to bomb threats. New York Post/KTVX.

Two men were arrested in Utah for planting a bomb under a news van that was covering the Charlie Kirk assassination. New York Post. Adeeb Nasir, 58, and Adil Justice Ahmed Nasir, 31, were arrested and charged with terrorism, along with multiple gun and drug crimes. The men are accused of planting a bomb or incendiary device under a Fox 13 news van. The device was lit but did not explode and was planted near an occupied building. A search of their home found two hoax devices, along with drugs and illegal firearms, as both men were prohibited from owing firearms due to previous drug charges. No motivation for the attack has been revealed. 

My Comment:

This is a concerning situation and it could have gone a lot worse. Thankfully their device did not explode, probably due to shoddy construction. It is unclear how dangerous the bomb was, or if it was just an incendiary device. But it's also unclear if the news van was occupied at the time, even the Fox 13 article on the incident does not say. 

Had the device worked as planned it might have just burned up the news van. That could have still killed someone if the van was occupied. However, if it was a true bomb it could have injured or killed folks, either in the occupied building nearby or simply folks out on the street. Without a better idea of the device or where this incident actually occurred it's hard to tell. 

It is also completely unclear what the motivation is. Given that the two men are Pakistani in origin, Adeeb is an immigrant while Adil was supposedly born here, it would follow that this was a case of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, I would be very surprised if we don't find out some link to Islamic terrorism. 

However, that is not a given. Since the news van was covering the Charlie Kirk assassination and that case was pretty definitively linked to far left politics, it is possible that it was done in support of the assassination. You could even argue that the far left and radical Islam are ideologically aligned on certain issues and both groups really dislike Israel. 

What I do know is that it is extremely unlikely that this is directly related to the Charlie Kirk assassination. I just can't see the assassin and his transgender friends hooking up with an older Muslim man and his 31 year old son. How on earth would they even find each other, for one. Though the Charlie Kirk assassination does seem like it was a wider conspiracy, with some folks in the assassins circle possibly being involved, I can't imagine that they were working with these two men as well. 

Instead, I am almost certain that this was an attack of opportunity that probably had very little to do with Charlie Kirk's death at all. These guys were probably looking for a target for their bomb and the news truck presented itself. It probably don't go any deeper than that. 

The real question I have is how dangerous these guys actually were. They were armed despite being unable to own firearms and they were able to make a bomb. Had they been more competent they could have pulled off a major terror attack. But it's possible that these guys were just small time idiots as well. With what we know now we just can't tell. 

I do think that we an rule this out as "just a prank" though. You don't try to blow up or burn up a news van as a prank. I guess it's possible that the motivation could have been simple nihilism, which seems pretty common these days, but even then, I think this was a serious attack.