Army veteran Mark Steven Domingo.
The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday that a U.S. veteran who converted to Islam was found guilty of conspiring to bomb a white supremacist rally in California and could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
28-year-old Mark Steven Domingo intends to detonate two homemade bombs containing spikes at a rally scheduled to be held in Long Beach in April 2019.
The department stated that he was discovered by the FBI very early and that before he was arrested, undercover personnel ensured that the bomb would not work as planned.
On Wednesday, Domingo was found guilty in a jury trial on charges of providing material support to terrorism and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction. These charges are punishable by up to life imprisonment.
Domingo served in Afghanistan from September 2012 to January 2013 and apparently began to consider terrorist attacks in early 2019. He decided to move on after the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, which killed 50 people.
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In a post by a private online group, he said that the United States “needs” another mass shooting, “it will give them a taste of the terror they are happy to spread around the world.”
“There was a mosque shooting in New Zealand. There must be revenge,” Domingo wrote in a post.
According to the Ministry of Justice, before deciding to hold a white supremacist rally, he weighed the attacks on Jews, churches, and police.
Domingo is expected to be sentenced in November.
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