WORCESTER, Mass (Reuters) ? Prosecutors on Monday called a Massachusetts man accused of plotting to attack U.S. targets using model aircraft a "ticking time bomb" who should not be released to home confinement pending trial.
Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, has pleaded not guilty to charges surrounding a plot to fly remote-control, explosives-laden aircraft into the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol and to follow up the attacks with a ground assault.
He was also accused of attempting to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda. He was arrested after an undercover operation.
"The defendant should be detained for the safety of the community," said prosecutor Stephanie Siegmann during a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Worcester.
To show that he posed a danger, prosecutors said Ferdaus had been warned before his arrest about hostile and threatening behavior at a religious center he attended.
They said he was committed to jihad as "the only solution" and his goal was to terrorize the United States.
Ferdaus had even talked about making homemade explosives, prosecutors said.
His defense team requested he be released under house arrest to his family's home in Ashland, Massachusetts, about 25 miles west of Boston, and would explore the possibility of bail with his parents.
Defense attorneys called the attack plan "fantasy," similar to a video game.
"It is clear, that on his own, without the FBI, Mr. Ferdaus would not have done anything," said public defender Miriam Conrad.
He did not know how to obtain explosives or assault weapons and did not make any effort to reach out to al Qaeda on his own before he was introduced to two undercover FBI employees, Conrad said.
Ferdaus, a physics graduate from Northeastern University in Boston, was arrested and charged in September.
Authorities said in an affidavit that he began planning to commit a violent "jihad" against the United States in early 2010.
He allegedly modified mobile phones to act as electrical switches for improvised explosive devices, authorities said, and is accused of supplying the phones to undercover FBI employees he believed were members of, or recruiters for, al Qaeda.
As part of his plan, authorities said Ferdaus traveled to Washington to conduct surveillance and take photographs of his target and identify sites from which he planned to launch the explosives-filled aircraft.
Defense attorneys said the trip was funded by the undercover employees, and they questioned the reliability of a cooperating witness who introduced Ferdaus to the undercover employees.
(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)
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