A former University of Chicago student was charged with concealing his plans to make a bomb following an explosion and fire in his dorm room, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Aram Brunson, 21, hid and misrepresented his attempts to create a bomb, part of his apparent ambitions to support Armenian nationalist efforts, to multiple law enforcement agencies, according to a federal complaint submitted Tuesday by FBI Special Agent Thomas Dalton.
According to the complaint, Brunson, of Massachusetts, was 19 and a second-year student at the South Side university when a fire erupted in his dorm room in Woodlawn Commons on the Hyde Park campus in January 2023.
Upon responding to the blaze, Chicago Fire Department workers and FBI bomb technicians found chemicals associated with fireworks and ammunition in the room. Dalton wrote that two students who lived down the hallway said they had heard an explosion just before the fire alarm went off.
The university student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, reported shortly afterward that a student had been arrested in connection with the fire. A university representative said Brunson had not been enrolled at the university since the blaze.
Brunson allegedly lied to both university police and FBI agents about the fire and materials in his room, saying he had been cooking on a hot plate and that he had been trying to build a flare according to instructions in a YouTube video.
Agents searching Brunson’s computer found videos of him from the preceding year talking about how to “form, fund and arm a revolutionary group,” including names, group organization and possible ways to purchase weapons.
“Significant portions of the videos are focused on arming terrorist/revolutionary groups,” the complaint reads. “Brunson advocates the use of bombs as the weapons of choice.”
The videos show Brunson discussing possible assassination targets, compounds used in making bombs and advocating for use of the hand grenade, per the complaint. The bomb-making videos were allegedly narrated in Armenian.
Agents searching Brunson’s computer and phone also found communications between him and two friends about military and bomb training in the months preceding the fire in Brunson’s dorm room, the complaint states.
After the fire, Brunson left the university, the complaint states. In August 2023, security officials found traces of explosives on his luggage as he was leaving Boston Logan International Airport, but Brunson denied knowledge of why his things might have explosive residue on them, according to the complaint. Officers searching Brunson’s family home later that month found a recipe for creating a bomb in his bedroom and traces of explosive materials on three places in the room, the complaint alleges.
The FBI believes Brunson, who is of Armenian descent, is currently in Armenia and has declined to return to the U.S. to meet with agents.