Officials: Muslim community turned in terror suspect
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, 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.