Sami Osmakac

Sami Osmakac is an Albanian-American convicted by a jury on June 10, 2014, following a criminal trial in U.S. District Court, of plotting terrorist attacks in and near Tampa, Florida.

Osmakac, an Albanian and a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested January 7, 2012, for his plot. He intended to bomb nightclubs, detonate a car bomb, fire an assault rifle, wear an explosive belt in a crowded area, and take hostages.

Osmakac recorded an eight-minute video prior to his arrest describing the planned attack as retribution for wrongs committed against Muslims. The Federal Bureau of Investigation claimed Osmakac bought explosives and firearms from an undercover agent. He had been under investigation since September 2011, when a confidential source informed federal authorities that Osmakac walked into a business seeking al-Qaeda flags.

Osmakac appeared in videos posted to an extremist YouTube nom de guerre "Abu Samia", in which he condemned other religions and secular Muslims. Osmakac was kicked out of two mosques in the Tampa Bay area and reported to the FBI by a Muslim acquaintance. The FBI then set up a sting operation, supplying Osmakac, who could not even afford to fix the car he intended to drive, with money to purchase weapons and a video camera stolen from Best Buy to make his video.

During the trial, Osmakac's defense argued that the FBI took advantage of his radical Islamic beliefs and mental illness to entrap him into trying to commit a crime. However, entrapment is "not just providing the opportunity...[the defense] have to show the government pressured or induced or actually created the actual intent to commit the crime". On November 5, 2014, Osmakac was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The case is currently under appeal.

• How The FBI Created A Terrorist (Video production). #FreeSpeechZone. Alyona Minkovski. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. March 18, 2015. Retrieved May 30, 2016.CS1 maint: others (link)