I appreciate the thread. It's easy to follow. Several comments:
Your recap implies "the ingedient" TATP is not common in the United States. In fact, the source document says the ingredients of TATP are common househould items. It's usage, however, is uncommon in the United States. I think that's a significant distinction.
That several people were questioned shouldn't be interpreted, absent more information, as meaning much of anything. My understanding is that the relationship between these people (other than the roomate) was that they lived in the same apartment complex. Given the roomate was Pakistani, it would only make sense these Muslims would have known Heinrich ("our friend Cheeba's weird roomate"). That doesn't mean they had any involvement.
Why would these guys have stuck around if they were involved in a plot with Heinrich? Whether he blew himself up or someone detonated him remotely, accomplices living in the same complex who knew him would likely have scattered after such an incident. Perhaps they figured it looked sufficiently like a not-so-old fashioned suicide that they weren't at risk. More likely, they weren't accomplices.
"our friend Cheeba's weird roomate"
That would hold up if it weren't for several reports of bomb making materials, ammonium nitrate and Jihadi literature in the dorm room. Don't forget, that was Cheeba's dorm room as well.
Thanks, it wasn't meant to be a thread to end all threads but rather a simple thread, with links, to what we positively know about Hinrichs as of right now.
Thanks. That's a good distinction to make. I guess I was thinking that we don't have quite so many suicide bombers in the United States -- yet.
Here's a Wikipedia link to TATP. My first degree was in chemistry and I recall hearing about it and other explosives but nobody was dumb enough to try and make it. Being pyros by nature, we did make minor explosives -- like the ones used in the old poppers!