WASHINGTON — Within the past week, authorities say, Amine El Khalifi’s plan was proceeding as hoped: An al-Qaeda associate handed him an automatic weapon to kill security officers inside the U.S. Capitol. A bomb-laden vest would detonate in the building. He would die as a martyr.
But there was a problem: The explosives were inert, the gun inoperable and the man who provided them was an undercover officer — not, as he thought, an al-Qaeda associate, according to court documents.
El Khalifi was arrested in a parking garage Friday on his way to carry out an attack the FBI says had been kicked around for months, with shifting targets in mind.
Court papers unsealed Friday trace the evolution from a vague plan to prepare for the West’s “war on Muslims” to more clearly articulated visions of attacking a restaurant and a synagogue before, finally, settling on a plot to obliterate the seat of American government.
As El Khalifi, 29, made a court appearance Friday on a terrorism-related charge, the FBI executed search warrants inside a gated residential community in Alexandria and at a red-brick rambler in Arlington, though it wasn’t immediately known what they found.
El Khalifi is scheduled to have a bond hearing Wednesday. A public defender who was present for El Khalifi’s initial appearance didn’t return a phone message Saturday.
Authorities haven’t described how they think El Khalifi became intent on destruction and have released rudimentary biographical details. He was born in Morocco and came to the United States in 1999, when he was 16, overstaying his visitor visa and remaining in the country illegally, court papers say. He is unemployed and is not thought to be associated with al-Qaeda.
The investigation that led to El Khalifi’s arrest started in January 2011 on a confidential informant’s tip to the FBI. The informant described a meeting inside an Arlington apartment, where a person who produced an AK-47, two revolvers and ammunition urged the group to prepare for the “war on Muslims.” El Khalifi, the FBI learned, expressed agreement.
By December, the sting operation — and, authorities say, El Khalifi’s own plans — were taking shape. That month, he traveled to Baltimore with a man he knew as Hussein to meet a person named Yusuf whom he thought was an al-Qaeda associate, authorities say. He told Yusuf he planned to blow up a building in Alexandria, Va., that housed military offices.
Unbeknownst to El Khalifi, the man who called himself Yusuf was an undercover law enforcement officer.
As the meetings continued, the plans evolved. El Khalifi spoke in December of wanting to attack a synagogue and Army generals. But within days, he was he settling on a new plan to bomb a Washington restaurant, the complaint says.
He changed his mind a week later, saying he wanted to blow himself up inside the Capitol on Feb. 17 as an act of martyrdom, prosecutors say.
