San Diego
A pretrial hearing will be held next month for the Rev. Dorman Owens and six members of his fundamentalist Baptist congregation who were arrested and charged last week with conspiring to bomb a San Diego abortion clinic. U.S. District Judge Earl B. Gilliam set the proceeding for Dec. 14.
Owens will also be in court today for a bail hearing. The Santee preacher is being held without bail in the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Owens, 54, and six other members of the Bible Missionary Fellowship Church were arrested Thursday and charged with plotting to bomb the Family Planning Associates Medical Group in San Diego on July 27. The fuse on the bomb burned out and there was no explosion.
In a separate indictment, Owens also is charged with witness tampering for prison visits he made to Eric Everett Svelmoe. Svelmoe was arrested in July for allegedly placing a pipe bomb taped to a gasoline can on the doorstep of the medical office. Federal officials charge that Owens was attempting to persuade Svelmoe to withhold testimony about the incident.
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