Photo by ewilfong.

Some breaking news from the Washington Post this afternoon: federal authorities have arrested a Ashburn, Virginia man on charges that he independently conceived and carried out a video surveillance operation on the Metro under the belief that he would be handing over the footage to al-Qaeda operatives. In fact, the feds had commissioned Farooque Ahmed to provide the information as part of an undercover sting operation. Ahmed, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and originally from Pakistan, is scheduled to appear in an Alexandria court this afternoon. According to the Post’s report, authorities state that the public was never in any danger and no attack on Metro was imminent.

UPDATE: WMATA has released a statement regarding the arrest and encouraging riders to maintain awareness in stations:

Following this morning’s arrest of Farooque Ahmed for attempting to assist others in planning to conduct terrorist activities against the Metrorail system, we want to assure our riders and employees that at no time was the public in danger during this investigation. The FBI was aware of Mr. Ahmed’s activities from before the alleged attempt began and closely monitored him until his arrest.

We thank our law enforcement partners with whom we work with closely and on an ongoing basis. And we especially want to commend the FBI, Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security for their support on this arrest.

[…]

This arrest reinforces the need for continued vigilance by Metro and its customers.

WMATA’s complete statement can be found here. For those interested, a PDF version of the indictment is located after the jump.