The arrest of an 18-year-old in South Carolina who allegedly bought ammonium nitrate on eBay to make bombs for a planned suicide attack at his high school has once again put AN security in the spotlight.
Ryan Schallenberger of Chesterfield, S.C., was arrested April 21 after authorities received a tip from his mother and stepfather, who had retrieved a reported 20 pounds of AN after getting a delivery notice from the postal service. The youth, a top student at Chesterfield High School, faces several state charges and three federal charges, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a possible life sentence.
Authorities conducted a search of Schallenberger’s home after the arrest and seized several items, including a laptop computer, an audiotape, and a 50-page journal that reportedly contained a timeline for an attack that involved locking the school’s doors and placing more than five explosives in the school building. Chesterfield is a town of about 1,500 in northeastern South Carolina, about 60 miles southeast of Charlotte.
While initial reports said the teen had ordered 10 pounds of AN from a Kentucky-based seller on eBay, authorities reported on April 23 that the amount actually weighed 20 pounds. News stories reported that several online auctions for AN were still active on eBay Monday night, including one for a 10-pound bag of AN from a seller in Hillsboro, Ky., for $29.90 including shipping. Numerous searches conducted by Green Markets throughout the week, however, found no active listings for bagged quantities of AN after April 22.
An eBay spokesperson said on Wednesday that the online auction site had removed the AN ads posted by the Kentucky seller, but would not publically divulge the seller’s name because of privacy agreements, nor give the reason why the ads had been pulled. EBay said it is cooperating with authorities in the investigation.
Both The Fertilizer Institute and the South Carolina Fertilizer and Agrichemical Association (SCFAA) told Green Markets that the seller had violated South Carolina law by selling the AN to Schallenberger. Mike Watkins, executive director of SCFAA, said the state passed a law in 2002 making it illegal for anyone to sell AN in South Carolina unless they are registered with the department of regulatory services. “Any sale, any amount, is restricted, so the seller was in violation of our state statutes,” Watkins said, adding that he was unsure how the state would proceed with regard to charges against the seller.
SCFAA sent an email to members in the wake of the arrest, noting that South Carolina was the first state to pass security legislation related to explosive fertilizers such as AN. The fertilizer regulations are administered by the Department of Plant Industry, Regulatory and Public Service Programs, Clemson University, and state that “no person shall distribute restricted fertilizers in any quantity without a restricted fertilizer permit.”
SCFAA noted in the letter that “mail order or internet sales do not preclude anyone from the SC fertilizer law if they are offering products for sale in this state. This obviously constitutes a violation of the law on the seller’s part. However, this marketing strategy is inherently difficult to detect due to the volume of information on the internet and available through mail order publications.”
Kathy Mathers, vice president of public affairs for TFI, said TFI has contacted eBay in the past regarding online sales of AN, including sending a letter in June 2004 urging eBay to reconsider allowing AN sales on the site. “Their response was that if it’s not against the law, why are you trying to tell us what to do?” Mathers said. “Based on past conversations, they were not going to change their pattern based on some conversation with industry.”
The Department of Homeland Security is currently in the process of drafting federal regulations for the sale and handling of AN, authorized by the Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act of 2007. That bill was signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 26, 2007, and is strongly supported by the fertilizer industry (GM Jan. 7, p. 1). “Our hope is that this law would effectively eliminate anonymous sales of the product,” Mathers said.
DHS has reportedly missed one deadline for the AN regulations, and Mathers would not speculate whether the April 21 arrest of Schallenberger might speed up the process.