Muslim source turned in terror suspect, officials say
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The tip that led to the FBI’s subway-bombing sting came from a source in the Muslim community: A Pakistani-born man from a middle-class suburb was trying to join a terrorist group, law- enforcement officials said Thursday.
Farooque Ahmed, a naturalized citizen arrested Wednesday, was a married father who had a good job with a telecommunications company. Authorities say he also was eager to kill Americans in Afghanistan and committed to becoming a martyr.
Ahmed thought he had found what he wanted, a pair of al-Qaida operatives who would help him carry out an attack on the nation’s second-busiest subway, in Washington, D.C., according to court documents unsealed Thursday. But the operatives were really undercover investigators whose meetings at a local hotel room were all staged with the FBI’s cameras rolling, law-enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.
What followed was an elaborate ruse in which Ahmed was given intelligence-gathering duties and coded information in a Quran by two individuals posing as al-Qaida operatives as part of the supposed plot to kill commuters.
Ahmed, 34, was taped discussing his firearm, martial-arts and knife skills and offering to teach those deadly tactics to others, according to an FBI affidavit. Officials said they took guns and ammunition out of Ahmed’s suburban Ashburn, Va., town house during a search Wednesday.
Ahmed was arrested just weeks before, the FBI says, he planned to make the annual religious pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The case represents the latest in a recent string of would-be terrorist attacks that officials say were aided, hatched or carried out by U.S. citizens.
Like the accused gunman in the deadly Fort Hood, Texas, shooting and the convicted terrorist who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square, officials said they believe Ahmed was radicalized inside the U.S. But they do not yet know what sent him down that path.
Like many would-be terrorists and sympathizers, Ahmed potentially was influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric who preached in northern Virginia until 2002 and now lives in hiding in Yemen, officials said.