Bomb parts at U.S. airport could have exploded: FBI

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The liquid packed in an Air Jamaica passenger's suitcase could have caused a disastrous explosion if it had ignited in mid-air, an FBI agent said on Thursday at a hearing for a man charged with trying to take bomb parts on a plane.

"If the appropriate heat source was introduced, absolutely" the nitromethane could have ignited, FBI agent Kelly Boaz testified at a hearing for Kevin Brown.

The 32-year-old Jamaican man was arrested at Orlando International Airport on Tuesday as he prepared to check his luggage for a flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

The FBI said the suitcase contained two galvanized pipes, end caps with holes drilled in them, two prescription bottles containing air gun pellets, a model rocket igniter, batteries, lighters, lighter fluid and two plastic vodka bottles of nitromethane, a liquid used as an industrial solvent and race car fuel.

Assistant U.S. Public Defender Clarence Counts argued that the liquid and other bomb components, which Boaz acknowledged were unassembled and packaged separately, did not endanger the flight.

"None of these items, your honor, were packaged in such a way that they would explode," Counts argued. "We did not have a bomb."

U.S. Magistrate Karla Spaulding sided with prosecutors and let stand the charge against Brown of attempting to put an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft.

Brown was returned to the Seminole County Jail where he is being held without bond because Counts, without explanation, waived the scheduled bond hearing.

Afterward, Counts would only say he would reschedule a bond hearing for Brown "if circumstances change."

Brown was stopped at the airport by officers who said he acted suspiciously while preparing to check his bag. He variously told Boaz that he planned to explode a tree stump on his cousin's land in Jamaica, and that he wanted to show his friends the kind of improvised explosive device he had seen while serving in Iraq.

Newspaper reports said Brown was a U.S. Army veteran who had worked for a military contractor in Iraq last year and who had struggled with depression since the murder of his mother in 2005. His lawyer declined to comment on that.