A man arrested Friday at O'Hare International Airport on charges of aiding a foreign terror organization may have also targeted the now-defunct Aurora nightclub LIT at the Aurora-Naperville border, ABC7's I-Team reports.
According to the report, the FBI claims that Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, 18, of Aurora, talked in code about placing bombs inside and outside the nightclub to kill as many people as possible; in a court filing, his alleged associate Adel Daoud (charged in a seperate Chicago terrorism case) is quoted describing Lit as a place where "all these filthy people [go] and use drugs and alcohol."
Tounisi's father, Ahmad Tounisi, told the station that the plot could only be planned by Daoud, not his son, and that his son is being targeted for being Muslim. "He never hurt anyone in his life, why would he start now?" Ahmad Tounisi told the paper. "All my kids born and raised here, they are more American than some Americans.”
Tounisi was taken into custody at O’Hare on Friday; according to a separate ABC7 report, authorities say he has spent months searching terrorist websites, end made contact with an FBI informant posing as a jihadist terror operative expressing willingness to die for a terrorist cause.