He didn’t turn out to have a bomb. “Suspicious Man Stopped At Church Service,” from the Carolina Channel, with thanks to The One Who Must Not Be Named and DC Watson:
GREENVILLE — A man has attracted the attention of the FBI after an incident at a Greenville County church last weekend.
Sheriff’s deputies said Iyad Abed Alnazli entered the Redemption World Outreach Center’s morning service Sunday, and tried to approach the stage.
“It was a young man of Arabic descent who had come in and said that he had a message for the church and this was a word from Allah.” church founder Ron Carpenter said
Security officers met Alnazli before he reached the stage and stopped him.
“He became unraveled. He began to scream vulgarities out,” Carpenter said.
When the officers escorted Alnazli from the building, they found he had left a briefcase in the foyer and parked his car in a church worker’s spot against the building.
“And our first thoughts were, ‘We have someone here who’s unstable.’ But the concerns grew when he began to talk all of the terrorist language, ‘I want to do my job. I want to go back to my homeland,” Carpenter said.
Deputies called the bomb squad and the FBI to investigate….
The bomb squad blew up the bag, but found no explosives. The FBI told WYFF News 4 only that it was aware of the incident and would not elaborate, but Carpenter said he was told that Alnazli was on an FBI watch list.
Investigators said Alnazli had recently been treated for mental problems.