Feds: Citizen Aimed to Blow Up D.C.-Area Metro Stations in Supposed al Qaeda Plot
Farooque Ahmed thought he was working with al Qaeda, but caught in FBI sting.
Oct. 27, 2010 — -- Farooque Ahmed thought he was planning multiple, mass-casualty bombings of the Washington-area Metrorail system with operatives from al Qaeda, officials said. In reality, he was the target of an FBI sting operation.
Ahmed, 34, of Ashburn, Va., was arrested early this morning by the FBI.
The indictment accuses Ahmed of scouting and photographing metro stations in the Washington, D.C., area, and even drawing diagrams to show where to plant bombs to cause the most casualties. He also is accused of turning over that information to men he thought were members of al Qaeda.
"It's 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," said U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride. "Today's arrest highlights the terrorism threat that exists in Northern Virginia and our ability to find those seeking to harm U.S. citizens and neutralize them before they can act."
On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., returned a three-count indictment against Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, charging him with 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 help carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at D.C.-area Metrorail stations.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.
Ahmed planned and plotted to blow up metro stations from April 2010 until his arrest, the indictment claims.
On July 19, 2010, in a hotel room in Sterling, Va., Ahmed allegedly handed a memory stick containing video images of a Metrorail station in Arlington to an individual Ahmed believed to be al Qaeda.
On that same day, Ahmed is accused of agreeing to "case" two other Metrorail stations in Arlington as locations of terrorist attacks. Ahmed then allegedly turned over the pictures of those stations to his supposed al Qaeda contact in a Herndon, Va., hotel room in September 2010.
Also in September, Ahmed provided diagrams he drew of three Metrorail stations in Arlington, Va., to a contact he believed was with al Qaeda, officials said. He also provided suggestions as to where explosives should be placed on trains in stations in Arlington to kill the most people in simultaneous attacks planned for 2011.
