WASHINGTON — A Pakistan-born Virginia man was arrested Wednesday and accused of casing subway stations in what he thought was an al-Qaida plot to bomb and kill Washington-area commuters.
The bombing plot was a ruse conducted over the past six months, the FBI said, but 34-year-old Farooque Ahmed readily handed over video of northern Virginia subway stations, suggested using rolling suitcases rather than backpacks to kill as many people as possible and offered to donate money to al-Qaida’s cause overseas.
The public never was in danger because FBI agents were aware of Ahmed’s activities and monitored him throughout, the agency said. And the people who Ahmed thought were al-Qaida operatives were actually working on behalf of the government, according to a federal law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss details of the case.
Ahmed was indicted Tuesday under seal by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., and the charges were made public Wednesday. He is accused of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and attempting to provide material support to carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties. Ahmed, a naturalized citizen, lives in Ashburn, Va., outside Washington.
During a brief federal court appearance in Alexandria, Ahmed did not enter a plea and was ordered held without bail. He told U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson he couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer. Prosecutors said they planned to use some classified information as evidence in the case.
U.S. Attorney Neil Mac-Bride said in a statement that it was “chilling that a man from Ashburn is accused of casing rail stations with the goal of killing as many Metro riders as possible through simultaneous bomb attacks.”
Ahmed’s arrest comes as the U.S. has been struggling with an uptick in Americans plotting terrorist attacks over the past 18 months.
Last week, a Hawaii man was arrested on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his plans to attend terrorist training in Pakistan. In August, a Virginia man was caught trying to leave the country to fight with an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Somalia. And in May, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized citizen also from Pakistan, tried to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner in New York City. U.S. authorities had no intelligence about Shahzad’s plot until the smoking car turned up in Manhattan.
The FBI has made several cases with agents working undercover: Last year, authorities arrested a Jordanian after he tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb outside a Dallas skyscraper. In an unrelated case, authorities in Springfield, Ill., arrested a man after he tried to set off what he thought were explosives in a van outside a federal courthouse. In both cases, decoy devices were provided to the men by FBI agents posing as al-Qaida operatives.
Federal investigators said that, starting in April, Ahmed met several times with people he believed were al-Qaida operatives. During one of those meetings, investigators said, he agreed to watch and photograph a hotel in Washington and a subway station in Arlington, Va. He also was accused of recording video of an Arlington subway station on four occasions, and agreeing to get security information about two stations.
According to the indictment:
Ahmed took video of four northern Virginia subway stations - Arlington Cemetery, Courthouse, Pentagon City and Crystal City, whichis near the Pentagon - and monitored security at a hotel in the District of Columbia. In a series of meetings at hotels in northern Virginia, Ahmed provided the videos to someone he believed was part of a terrorist organization and said he wanted to donate $10,000 to help the overseas fight and collect donations in a way that would not raise red flags.
In a Sept. 28 meeting in a Herndon, Va., hotel, Ahmed also suggested that terror operatives use rolling suitcases to blow up the subway instead of backpacks. During that same meeting Ahmed said he wanted to kill as many military personnel as possible and suggested an additional attack on a Crystal City subway station.
The indictment alleges he also handed over diagrams of the Arlington subway stations and gave suggestions about where to put explosives on trains to kill the most people in simultaneous attacks planned for 2011.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama was aware of the investigation before Ahmed was arrested. Gibbs also offered assurances that the public was never in danger.
In a statement, David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said the case “demonstrates how the government can neutralize such threats before they come to fruition.”
There are no indications Ahmed was connected with larger terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official, who requested anonymity to discuss an intelligence matter.
Information for this article was contributed from Washington by Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo, from Arlington, Va., by Brett Zongker, from Reston, Va., by Kathleen Miller, and from Baltimore by Ben Nuckols of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/28/2010