U.S. facing more threats from citizens

Farooque Ahmed’s arrest comes as the U.S. has been struggling with an uptick in Americans plotting terrorist attacks in the past 18 months.

• Last week, a Hawaii man was arrested for making false statements to the FBI about his plans to attend terrorist training in Pakistan.

• In August, a Virginia man was caught trying to leave the country to fight with an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Somalia.

• In May, Faisal Shazhad, a naturalized citizen also from Pakistan, tried to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner in New York City. U.S. authorities had no intelligence about Shahzad’s plot until the smoking car turned up in Manhattan.

• Last year, authorities arrested a Jordanian national after he tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb outside a Dallas skyscraper.

• In an unrelated case, authorities in Springfield, Ill., arrested a man after he tried to set off what he thought were explosives in a van outside a federal courthouse.