OU football stadium bombing update.(University of Oklahoma )

When University of Oklahoma (OU) student Joel Henry Hinrichs III blew himself up on October 1, 2005, the FBI and OU officials held a hurried press conference to assure the public that the incident was merely a tragic suicide by an emotionally disturbed student, with no connection whatsoever to terrorism. That is the line that most of the media have followed in the months since, discounting evidence pointing toward--as we reported in "Terrorists in Mid-America," in our October 31, 2005 issue--Mr. Hinrichs' involvement with an Islamic terror cell in Norman, Oklahoma. The bomb inside Hinrichs' backpack detonated on his lap as he sat on a park bench outside the OU stadium, where 85,000 fans had turned out for the OU-Kansas State game. If the bomb had detonated inside the stadium, there could have been many more deaths besides that of Mr. Hinrichs.

In a February 28 briefing on the explosion investigation, Norman Police Department bomb expert Sgt. George Mauldin told the Norman City Council that Hinrichs probably didn't commit suicide, as had been widely reported. "I believe he accidentally blew himself up," the Associated Press reported Mauldin as saying. When asked if he believed Hinrichs meant to enter the stadium with the explosives, Mauldin replied, "I don't believe he intended for an explosion to occur at that spot [on the park bench]." "Someone saw him fiddling with it [the backpack] shortly before the explosion ...