By Allan Lengel
For AOL News
WASHINGTON — The FBI decided to end its sting and arrest a Northern Virginia man now charged with plotting to blow up D.C. -area subway stations because it was concerned he was about to leave the country to go on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, according to a court document and law enforcement sources.
FBI agents arrested Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Ashburn, Va., on Wednesday on charges that he conspired with people he thought were al-Qaida operatives to blow up the Arlington National Cemetery, Pentagon City, Crystal City and Court House subway stations in Northern Virginia.
In some other cases involving stings, the FBI let the plot play out more. In Dallas, for example, FBI agents in 2009 actually provided fake explosives to Hosam Smadi, who drove a car bomb to a skyscraper downtown and tried detonating it.
In September 2009, FBI agents posing as low-level al-Qaida operatives provided Michael C. Finton — aka Talib Islam — with fake explosives in a van that he allegedly tried detonating in front of the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield, Ill.
In this latest case, Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, met with undercover FBI agents and FBI operatives over the past several months and provided video and diagrams of subway stops and conducted surveillance, authorities said. He also advised when the best time was to kill the maximum people, but never came close to carrying out the plot, investigators said.
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