DEVELOPING STORY: Buford Rogers Arrested In Alleged Localized Terror Plot In Minnesota, FBI Says

Buford Braden Rogers: Source: Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office.

FBI agents and other members of law enforcement have arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers in Montevideo, Minn., after executing a search warrant Friday and finding “explosive devices” and “several guns,” the FBI said today.

“The FBI believes that a terror attack was disrupted by law enforcement personnel and that the lives of several local residents were potentially saved,” the agency said.

The alleged plot was “discovered and subsequently thwarted through the timely analysis of intelligence and through the cooperation and coordination” among federal, state and local agencies, the FBI said.

How long the probe had been under way was not immediately clear. Also unclear is whether the alleged plot was targeted at specific individuals or posed a general local threat.

Montevideo is a small town in Chippewa County, about 140 miles west of Minneapolis. Rogers is being held on a charge of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis/St. Paul is reporting that agents found “Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and a Romanian AKM assault rifle among the firearms.”

Agencies participating in the probe include the Montevideo Police Department; the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Minnesota State Highway Patrol; the Bloomington Police Department; the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office (South Dakota); the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; and members of CEE-VI (Cooperative Enforcement Effort), the FBI said.

Rogers turned 24 in December, according to his booking sheet at the Sheriff’s Office.