Man Admits to Plot to Bomb Pentagon

Man Admits to Plot to Bomb Pentagon

July 10, 2012
By EVAN PEREZ

A Massachusetts man plans to plead guilty to federal terrorism charges in a plot to bomb the Pentagon with a remote-controlled model airplane.
A plea agreement Rezwan Ferdaus signed was filed Tuesday by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Boston. In it, he admitted to attempting to damage and destroy a federal building, and providing material support to terrorists.

Mr. Ferdaus's attorney confirmed the plea deal, which includes agreeing to accept a 17-year prison sentence, followed by 10 years of supervised release. The plea deal is contingent on approval by a federal judge, who has set a hearing for July 20.

Mr. Ferdaus, of Ashland, Mass., is a U.S. citizen and graduate of Northeastern University with a degree in physics, authorities said. He was arrested in September 2011 in a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation in which FBI agents provided him fake explosives. The plot never posed a danger to the public because it was controlled by the agents, authorities said.

In addition to his Pentagon plot, he planned to attack the Capitol with grenades and assault rifles, the FBI alleged.

Prosecutors alleged that he provided to people he believed were al Qaeda recruiters mobile phones modified to act as detonators for improvised explosives, intending them to be used against U.S. soldiers overseas.

Mr. Ferdaus didn't know his alleged co-plotters were undercover FBI agents who were conducting a sting, according to prosecutors.

The federal prosecutors alleged that Mr. Ferdaus in 2010 began plotting to commit jihad against the U.S. At a January 2011 meeting with a federal informant, he said he was planning to attack the Pentagon with his own home-made drone, prosecutors alleged.

Authorities allege Mr. Ferdaus planned to buy multiple model airplanes but at the time of his arrest had bought only one. They allege he intended to use scale models of F-4 Phantom and F-86 Sabre planes, U.S. fighter jets from the 1950s and 1960s, packed with C-4 explosives.

The model planes were about one-tenth the size of real aircraft and measured up to 80 inches in length, with wingspans of up to 63 inches, and he planned to control them using GPS devices, U.S. authorities alleged.