Chicago Tribune –
CHICAGO — Two more men have been charged with planning to make explosives to be used during the NATO summit.
Police would not say whether they are connected to three men in their 20s who were arrested in a raid earlier in the week and charged under the state’s anti-terrorism statutes with planning to use Molotov cocktails during the summit.
Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of Chicago, was arrested Thursday afternoon without incident at his home, according to a police report. He was charged Saturday afternoon.
Senakiewicz, a mechanic, “had been planning/conspiring with more than two other individuals in the building of explosives, including Molotov cocktails which were to be used/detonated during the NATO summit,” according to the report.
According to prosecutors, Senakiewicz told others that he had “a carful of explosives” capable of taking out a highway overpass. On Tuesday, he told others he had explosives hidden in a hollowed-out book at his home, authorities said, but a search of his Chicago residence did not turn up any explosives.
Molly Armour, an attorney for the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing Senakiewicz, who works as a mechanic, called the accusations against her client “extremely sensationalized charges.”
“He’s a political man being targeted because of his beliefs,” Armour said.
Mark Neiweem, 28, of Chicago, was charged with one count of attempted possession of explosive or incendiary devices, prosecutors said. Neiweem “engaged in dialogue with a subject, during which time he provided same subject with a list of ingredients that are used in the construction of an explosive device,” according to a police report.
Prosecutors charged that Neiweem wanted an associate to go to a hobby shop and buy model rocket engines, PCB pipe and glue, so he could build a pipe bomb, authorities said. Prosecutors said Neiweem wrote the list of ingredients on a slip of paper that investigators have in evidence.
Neiweem’s attorney, Steven Saltzman, said his client had been in custody for at least 66 hours before he was charged, well beyond the 48-hour legal limit.
On Wednesday, three out-of-state men were arrested in an apartment raid and accused of plotting to hit President Bartack Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house and police stations with Molotov cocktails, according to court documents.
Brian Church, 20, of Fort. Lauderdale, Fla.; Jared Chase, 24, of Keene, N.H.; and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Fla; were charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device.
They were the first people to ever be charged with violating the state’s anti-terror ismstatutes, which were enacted after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, authorities said.
Their arrests were the result of an investigation since early May into a group suspected of making Molotov cocktails — crude bombs usually created by filling glass beer bottles with gasoline, according to court records.
Senakiewicz and Neiweem were arrested a day later, but police would not say if they were connected to the three.
