Ashland Man Indicted For Alleged Terror Plot
BOSTON (CBS) - The Ashland man who the FBI calls a would-be terrorist is now under indictment.
A grand jury indicted Rezwan Ferdaus today on charges he planned attacks on the pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.
At 26 years old Ferdaus, an American citizen was an educated man who played in a band and lived at home with his parents. But just below the surface the FBI says he was a homegrown terrorist, planning to attack national landmarks, using model airplanes, detonated with cell phones.
WBZ-TV's Diana Perez reports
To achieve his goal, he befriended undercover agents, who he thought were members of al-Qaeda and stockpiled equipment at a Framingham storage facility.
READ: Timeline Of Alleged Terror Plot
His indictment spells out how serious he was. Before his arrest yesterday the agents delivered to Ferdaus machine guns, grenades and a load of fake explosives.
The load contained 25 pounds of C-4 explosives, including approximately 1.25 pounds of actual C-4 explosives.
If there was any doubt that his intentions were not real, the indictment goes on to say about that, "While inspecting the C-4 explosives while in his storage unit, Ferdaus placed some of these explosives inside a remote controlled aircraft that he had ordered and obtained for his attack plan."
But security expert for Brandeis University Dr. Peter Krause says while Ferdaus was intent on causing harm, his background as an American, limited his ability to carry out his alleged attack, "They're not necessarily as effective in carrying out these attacks because again there's a limited amount of information on the Internet in terms of how you build an explosive or carry out a sophisticated type attack."
If convicted Ferdaus is facing a long prison sentence. For attempting to destroy the Pentagon alone he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and have to pay a $250,000 fine.
