Faisal Shahzad charged with terrorism

Faisal Shahzad 

 A Pakistani-born U.S. citizen was charged Tuesday with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the botched Times Square bombing. The government said he confessed to receiving explosives training in Pakistan.

Faisal Shahzad — the son of an air force officer in a wealthy Pakistani family — was arrested Monday night, pulled off a plane that was about to fly to the Middle East.

According to the complaint, Shahzad confessed to buying an SUV, rigging it with a homemade bomb and driving it Saturday night into Times Square, where he tried to detonate it.

In Pakistan, intelligence officials said several people had been detained in connection with the Times Square case. But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press the FBI is not aware of any arrests in Pakistan related to the case.

Shahzad admitted to receiving bomb-making training in Waziristan, the lawless tribal region where the Pakistani Taliban operates with near impunity, but there is no mention of al-Qaida in the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. The complaint said he returned from Pakistan in February, telling an immigration agent that he had been visiting his parents for five months and had left his wife behind.

"Based on what we know so far, it is clear that this was a terrorist plot aimed at murdering Americans in one of the busiest places in our country," Attorney General Eric Holder said in Washington.

Shahzad was on board a Dubai-bound flight that was taxiing away from the gate at Kennedy Airport late Monday when the plane was turned around and federal authorities took him into custody, law enforcement officials said. Federal officials had placed him on a "no-fly" list hours before his arrest.

Holder said Shahzad was talking to investigators, providing them with valuable information, The FBI read Shahzad his constitutional rights after he provided the information, and he continued to cooperate, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said.

Shahzad's court appearance Tuesday was delayed, in part because he was cooperating with authorities.
President Barack Obama said "hundreds of lives" may have been saved Saturday night by the quick action of ordinary citizens and law enforcement authorities who raised the alarm about the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder rigged with a crude bomb made of gasoline, propane and fireworks. The SUV, which had begun smoking, was parked on a bustling street in Times Square.

"As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized. We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated," Obama said.

Shahzad, 30, became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year shortly before traveling to Pakistan, where he had a wife, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

Investigators hadn't established an immediate connection to the Pakistani Taliban — which had claimed responsibility for the botched bombing in three videos — or any foreign terrorist groups, a law enforcement official told the AP.

"He's claimed to have acted alone, but these are things that have to be investigated," the official said.
Shahzad is the son of a former top Pakistani air force officer and deputy director general of the civil aviation authority, according to Kifyat Ali, the cousin of Faisal Shahzad's father.

Ali told reporters outside a two-story home in an upmarket part of Peshawar, the main city in northwestern Pakistan, that the family had yet to be officially informed of Shahzad's arrest in the United States.

"This is a conspiracy so the (Americans) can bomb more Pashtuns," Ali said, referring to a major ethnic group in Peshawar and the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan and southwest Afghanistan. "He was never linked to any political or religious party here."

He said Faisal often stayed in Peshawar when he came back from the United States.
His mother and father, retired Air Vice Marshall Baharul Haq, had left the house for an undisclosed location because of the media interest.

Source: AP