Washington (CNN) — U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI on Friday arrested a Moroccan man who was planning a suicide attack on the Capitol, police and a federal law-enforcement official said.
The man received what he thought was a vest with explosives, but the materials in the vest had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.
The man was arrested as soon as he accepted the vest from undercover officers, the federal law-enforcement source said.
The man had been closely monitored as part of a lengthy and extensive undercover operation, police said, adding U.S. Capitol Police had been “intimately” involved in the investigation.
The public was never in danger, police said.
The official said the person is not connected to a terrorist organization and was acting alone.
In September last year, a federal grand jury indicted a man for allegedly plotting to use large remote-controlled model airplanes filled with explosives to attack the Capitol and the Pentagon.
A man was arrested in September 2008 two blocks from the Capitol after an officer spotted a rifle in his car.
And in July 1998, a gunman fired shots in the Capitol building, killing two U.S. Capitol Police officers.
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