Teenager en route to terrorist group arrested

CHICAGO (AP):

An Illinois teenager who was friends with a man charged last year with trying to bomb a Chicago bar was arrested at an airport on his way to try to join a terrorist group in war-torn Syria, the FBI said on the weekend.

Abdella Ahmad Tounisi was arrested Friday night as he attempted to board a flight from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Turkey, which borders Syria, the FBI said. He hoped to join Jabhat al-Nusrah, an al-Qaida-affiliated group fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in a bloody civil war.

There are no links between Tounisi and the Boston Marathon bombings earlier in the week, the head of the FBI office in Chicago, Cory B. Nelson, said in a statement announcing the arrest.

Tounisi, a US citizen, was snared in an Internet sting after contacting a sham website set up by the FBI that purported to hook up would-be fighters with terrorists, the federal complaint says.